Unwanted Journeys
by Pokepika's Haunt
Summary: Warnings and more info inside; Rated T for safety and swearing- Row Wielder was not ready for this, and she didn't think she ever would be... Chapter 9 Up!
1. Skid Row Mistakes

A/N. That one OC-centric pokémon fic I promised I'd write. Well, here it is.

For the appearance of the main OC, look on my DeviantArt page, she's my most (recent-ish) drawing. She's got a loose backstory too, slightly separate from this fic for those of you writers who need/want an OC (big if, I'd also greatly appreciate it if you **ask** me before you use her.)

Anyways, this is my first completely OC-centric story that doesn't have an actual main character from the canon as a focus. I'll try not to make her too Mary-sue, (yes, I did the test thing and realized I couldn't answer half the question because there were words I didn't understand, or I wasn't entirely sure if the context applied in the way I was thinking it did…). I'll be relying on you guys for this mostly…

Anyways… Most of the canon characters won't appear (unless they are gym leaders…) and I'll need additional OCs to fill out some roles here… (That means you peoples should look at my bio for a Trainer Profile! Remember: Be detailed and specific!)

Summary: She wasn't a tragedy waiting to happen, but she had a feeling that she probably wouldn't be coming home any time soon. Because really, what had they expected to happen?

Where a young girl is sent out rather reluctantly on a journey she is almost certain she won't survive, with a less than idea pokémon that she chose for herself.

 **Disclaimer: I only own Row, that is it…**

* * *

 **EP 01- Skid Row Mistakes**

* * *

" _And Ladies and gentlemen, that's it! A landslide victory from-"_

"Well _that_ was anti-climactic…" Brown eyes stared at the now black screen, dead without the electricity pouring out of the nearest outlet to feed it and the remote lost to the magical demons of the living room couch for the rest of the day, or at the very least until someone came home and bothered to find the damn thing…

"And you expected any different?" the voice came from somewhere in the kitchen, a disappointed, bored frown only deepening into a slight grimace as the speaker finally revealed herself, a tall green haired girl well into her teens and looking for all intense and purposes, as if she owned the place. She didn't, they both knew, but it was that kind of blatant sassiness that had gotten her to where she was today. And he wasn't entirely sure if he'd have had his younger sister any other way. "Bro, that was a Kitty League tournament hosted by the chairman of the K.R.P.F.C*, not one of those big meanie, high pressure championships you specifically go out of your way to compete in." she smirked, the same brown eyes he held glinting back at him with a growing sense of mischief, and he wasn't entirely certain whether he wanted to know what was going through that head of hers. "Be glad you saw anything good at all. That's a bunch of six, seven, and eight years olds playing patty cake with each other!"

"Yeah… well…" the objections would've fallen on deaf ears, especially when she simply turned to head back into the kitchen. She still hadn't finished breakfast after all, and with their father putting in early hours at his job once again, and their mother passed out upstairs and expressly forbidden from the kitchen as a whole for various very good reasons, the duty simply had fallen to whoever had gotten up the earliest.

"Well, what? You gonna give me another one of your 'Diamond in the Rough' speeches, or should I hold out till this afternoon?"

"Must you be so mean?"

"Well… _Somebody_ needs to let out all that air before you get a big head!" came the mocking, entirely unapologetic call. He sniffed in false indignation, or maybe it was genuine, he wasn't about to nitpick, and spared a glance at the clock.

"Hey… Kirsten?"

"What?"

"Where's Row?"

"At school?"

"Hasn't come down yet… unless she snuck out?" Kirsten ducked back out of the kitchen, a delicate eyebrow quirked in blatant disbelief, as if he'd just told her their mother was actually a twenty foot tall man who sang show tunes and did ballet in his spare time.

"Matt… This is Row we're talking about… You know? Our baby sister who's just shy of being ten years younger than us both?"

"Yeah, so? Your point?"

"Matt, the girl can't run for more than a minute without her lungs practically giving out on her."

"That doesn't stop her in school…"

"Yeah, which is why we constantly have her teachers calling home and asking our parents if she has asthma or something."

"Good point… ROW!"

"And he yells as if that's going to _somehow_ do the trick when he's downstairs and nothing short of a rampaging tornadus would wake her up."

"Ah, you forget that this is Row, and normally she's up by now."

"Yeah, this is Row, again. She stayed up till three last night doing Arceus knows what…"

"Oh yeah…" and here he'd been hoping against all hope that he wouldn't have to go upstairs and _physically_ get her up. Just as well though, it was coming up on ten, and the girl was already just shy of being half an hour late for school, plus he hadn't heard their mother's alarm clock go off yet, "I'll be back down in a bit, save me some pancakes-"

"I'M LATE!"

"…"

"Shut it, before I feed your pancakes to Princess and Bear."

"Yes ma'am…"

* * *

"Shit… shit-shit-shit!"

"Row, language!"

"Sorry!" It was an increasingly bad idea, but she'd never claimed to be one of the more brilliant people out there, and she was already running terribly late. Taking two or three steps at a time certainly wasn't going to hurt any… "Double shit!" Unless she slipped or tripped of course, then it would hurt a lot.

"Row!"

"Uh… Row? Breakfast?" She only just barely dodged her brother's drastically taller form, slipping through the small space the coffee table and sofa provided on her potentially disastrous short cut to the door.

"No time!"

"You're already late! Like really late!" she could practically see the spare glance he'd probably given the clock as he watched her hop over the hulking monstrosity he'd brought home after one particular journey to some far off region that had left him filthy rich, only for him to spend most of it in a little under a month's time on… well furniture and video games…

Not that she'd ever complain, because she'd certainly benefited from it.

"Doesn't matter!"

"Row!"

"What?!" she snapped, not entirely sure if she actually meant it, and glared at the form of her older sister in a plain white apron. There was a quirked eyebrow, one hand propped on her hop as an unimpressed look that she'd probably gotten from their father met her gaze.

"Breakfast."

"Feed it to Bear and Princess." She said in a tone she knew would've gotten her slapped had her father been present. Luckily, he was probably at work and wouldn't get home until half an hour after the academy let out.

"Smartass…" her sister shot at her retreating back, the door slamming shut and startling the two sleeping pokémon that had claimed the recently vacated seats of the larger sofa, much to her brother's increasing chagrin if the frustrated shout that echoed out of an open window was anything to go by.

"Bear! Princess! Arceus-damnit!"

"Matt!"

"Sorry!"

* * *

"Miss Wielder…" she winced, honestly she couldn't help it. Her teacher was staring her down, eyes filled with clear disappointment. And she didn't have to look him in the eye to know it. It was the look she always got whenever she managed to screw something up. Just as well too, because she was perfectly content to keep her own eyes glued permanently to the Arceus-awful linoleum floor underneath their feet. "… I'll let it slide this once since this is the first time you've been late this semester… but if it happens again…"

"I know, I know… Report home." How could she not when at least half the male population of her class alone had showed up an hour late at least at one point or another, their appearances all in various levels of disarray and upheaval.

One guy had even had the audacity to show up in nothing but his dress shirt and underpants. Now _that_ had been an interesting day.

And thank Mew for her hair having the decency to grow into bangs, because there was no way she would've been able to hide the smile stretching across her lips at that memory. _'Damnit!'_

"Now go find your seat young lady."

"Yes, sir." She mumbled, skirting around the edge to quickly take the seat farthest from the front.

She couldn't see a thing, considering she'd left her glasses at home in her rush to leave the house, but at that point, she really just didn't care. She'd already embarrassed herself once already showing up late and panting for air as if she'd just run a cross regional marathon. She wasn't about to compound on it by informing the teacher, and she certainly wasn't about to call her mother or either of her siblings and ask for them to deliver the pair.

She'd go blind and _pretend_ that a zubat didn't have better eyesight than her.

* * *

"Alright class… And Anthony, I see you there sleeping, wake up! Remember your projects are due two weeks on Thursday. Make sure you are ready. I'm expecting your best work. Casey, if you're having issues, talk to me. Kyle, I want a check-in to see how far you've gotten, not today, but tomorrow, and Row." She winced, freezing in the doorway and almost causing a bit of a traffic accident as result.

' _Damn, and I almost made it too.'_

"We need to have a talk. Come here."

"But…"

"Miss Wielder." She waited in complete silence, watching as the rest of her classmates filed out of the room in resentment, and grimaced as three in particular stopped to laugh at her misfortune, before scurrying out of the room like rattata.

"Ah… Sir, I know I haven't been doing too good lately, but…"

"Row."

"I promise I'll do better, honest."

"Row-…"

"Really."

"Row!" she sighed, puffing air through her nose and stubbornly gluing her eyes to the floor again, ignoring the slight pain when her chewed up nails that had _finally_ been growing out a little bit into the palm of her hand. "You're… well, I won't lie, you're in quite a bit of trouble. Ignoring the fact that you were late today, it baffles me, how you can do _so_ well on the tests and still somehow manage to nearly flunk out of the class entirely."

"I'm sorry."

"You're a bright girl. I've seen it, you _understand_. I've seen it, the way your eyes light up when something finally clicks. You _can_ learn, and you are… And yet you have such a low grade."

"I promised I'd do better…"

"Row, that's what you always say. And don't doubt, I've seen your record. You do great at the beginning of the semester. Amazing, in fact, and then you just stop. Your grades plummet, and… I can't see why. I want to help, I want to see you succeed. But you don't seem to want to try, at all."

"I _am_ trying…"

"Are you? Are you really?" she knew he was trying to look her in the eye, trying to get her to do the same. He probably was hoping for something in her eyes to show that it clicked, that _something_ he had said had gotten through… Well, she'd never been particularly good at listening, had she? "I'll schedule a meeting with your parents, see what we can do about _this_ and see if maybe we can get those grades up. Go on, go home now… I'll see you next week."

Not if her parents didn't kill her first.

"Yes sir."

* * *

In actuality, she hadn't gone home immediately that afternoon. She'd purposefully missed the bus, and had simply walked half-way, before deciding on a different course and taking a bit of a detour into town.

She'd idled, knowing full and well that she was stalling, and eyeballed some of the stores, not actually bothering to head inside and take a closer look at anything. And then she'd wasted a couple more hours watching some of the visiting trainers who'd stumbled into town on their way to one of the major cities with the more well-known gyms battle each other. There were a couple of coordinators, but none of them quite so impressive as to draw her attention completely and she was almost certain that her sister probably would've blown them out of the water had she been present.

Lucky for them, because while her sister was no master coordinator, she _was_ skilled and had been doing it for the better part of seven years now. She'd yet to win a competition though, but she'd also only ever competed in the more difficult ones, and those were never easy.

Eventually, the sun had completely sank under the horizon, and night had settled in like a blanket, sending most everyone with some sense in their heads scurrying back in doors. She still hadn't felt like going home though, so she'd further avoided the problem by slinking off to an old park that few people visited now.

A new, bigger, fancier one had been built closer to the center, and this one had kind of fallen into disrepair since, but enough people visited it that it hadn't completely fallen apart yet.

* * *

It wasn't until rather late, the old clock's hour hand striking what might've been nine but could've just as easily been ten with how dirty the glass had become, that someone finally found her.

"You know, I don't know whether I should be impressed that you managed to avoid the house for _this_ long or not." Matt's voice echoed out across the empty space and silence, his expression unimpressed and his tone dripping heavy with incredulity as he eyed her from some feet away.

Bear was somewhere in the shadows behind him, digging through the bushes and probably looking for presents to bring home, but it was little footnotes and trivial details that she was focusing on only so she wouldn't have to face her older brother.

The nineteen year old wouldn't have it though, and plopped himself down rather bodily into the swing next to her, the rusted metal creaking under his weight as he watched her comparatively small form swing next to him.

"Mom's pissed… And Dad's even more pissed… And Sis is… either impressed that you finally managed to beat her record for avoiding home, or amused that you had the audacity to do so in the first place…" there was a beat of silence where he waited for her response, though what exactly he was expecting of her she hadn't the faintest clue.

She certainly wasn't about to guess or comply.

"…"

"Right, well, after they got pissed, and three hours passed they started getting concerned cuz you hadn't come home yet. I'm not even going to _try_ and guess how exactly you managed to avoid them like that, but they practically tore the town upside down trying to find you." He let that image sink in before continuing, and if she hadn't been so completely depressed she might've laughed. "Mom thinks you're dead by the way, but she's also the first to jump to the worst conclusion her panicked brain can think of so… Dad's threatening to kill you the instant he finds you though."

"…"

"You know you're going to have say something eventually, right?"

"…"

"Right then, my baby sister has suddenly taken a vow of silence without letting anyone know…" there was a sharp whistle that cut through the air, and for a split second her heart stopped, the thought that her father had followed her brother here sending her into an almost panic. She calmed down though when she realized that it was only her brother, and his perfect mimicry of their father's usual commands and cues that the dog pokémon they kept as pets adhered to like trained soldiers.

Bear came bounding forward out of some bush on the far side of the park, leaping over a rusted see-saw that was _far_ too dangerous to ever see use again and a rusted spring rider that looked ready to collapse the instant a pidgey landed on it a little too roughly in one go, not even slipping as she landed and sprinted the rest of the distance.

The fluffy furfrou grinned, dropping her head with a rather heavy thud into her own lap and she just stared into those blue eyes for a moment before she gave her an almost piteous whine and trotted over to her brother instead. She got the pet she wanted finally and set down with a huff.

"Well then, let's go. I found you now it's time to face the music." He grinned at his own joke, but it quickly disappeared when he got no other response than her standing up and shuffling her way out of the park and in what was probably the direction home. "I blame you, because I can't blame anyone else right now…" she heard him say behind her, just imagining the pokémon's confused and indignant expression as the normal-type glared up at her brother before huffing and walking away.

* * *

"Do I even want to know what in the world you were thinking?" she sat on the sofa, both her brother and sister having made themselves scarce rather quickly after she'd trudged her way through the front door and into the house. "Eight hours… you were gone for eight hours…"

"…"

"Where did I go wrong?"

"Your teacher, Mr. Harts, calls today saying that you are failing his class… You're failing all of your classes, and you choose to fucking do this?!" she flinched as a hand came slamming down on the table, her father's voice rising in volume as her eyes remained glue to the wooden surface. "Arceus-damnit! Look at your mother and I when we are talking to you!"

"I'm sorry…"

"Just… just go to your room."

"Yes sir…" she mumbled out, slipping passed both and running up the steps, ignoring her sister when she peaked out of her own room and more or less sliding into her own. She crawled into bed, pulling the covers over her head and told herself she wouldn't cry no matter what, because this was entirely her own fault and she knew it.

* * *

She'd woken to her alarm clock blaring some increasingly obscene noise the next day, the sun having not quite risen in the skies just yet, and blinked morosely at the little red numbers…

Why had she set the clock yesterday when school wasn't till next week?

She fumbled for the off button twice before finally managing to shut the thing off, stumbling back into bed to get some more sleep.

There wasn't anything to do, really. It was the weekend, and she didn't have friends to hang out with that lived a reasonable distance from her house. She probably wouldn't be allowed outside anyways after yesterday.

"Row, sweetie?" she grimaced, hoping she could pretend to have fallen asleep, rather than answering as her mother opened the door to her room, probably frowning at the sight of various toys littered across the floor. "Row, I know you're up. You don't fall back asleep so easily."

She could damn well pretend to.

There was a sigh somewhere and the bed sank as the woman sat down, a hand coming up to pull away at the covers. She stubbornly refused to let go though and kept her face buried in her pillow when she lost that battle.

"Row, listen… your father and I, we've been doing some thinking… School. School's clearly not working for you right now. And honestly, I don't know why… I thought I raised you better, maybe I haven't. I don't know, maybe it's not even me or you, or your father…" her mother stopped talking with another resigned sigh, and she frowned, daring a glance as she watched her mother stare out the window in contemplation. "I keep telling you, and telling you, and _telling_ you, and it just doesn't click… We're going to see your teacher tomorrow, or maybe _I_ am. Your brother's on house arrest right now for various reasons." Reasons probably revolving around her. "So if you need anything he's here. I need to get to the labs, the professor's run into some issues again and _someone_ needs to feed the pokémon because poor Anna's gone and gotten herself sick again." A hand came down to pat her back as the weight disappeared, her mother standing up to leave.

"Your father is going to work late today. Stay in the house, please, both for today and tomorrow. No going outside, and no calling your friends. I'll be home late as well… I love you…"

"…" there was another sigh, and the click of the door shutting reached her ears, echoing in her own mind for a few minutes, maybe half an hour, before she went back to sleep.

* * *

"Welcome home!" she smiled at the greeting, hugging her eldest as she walked in before walking around him to set her purse down and remove her coat.

"Hi Matt, where's Kirsten?" she greeted back, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she tiptoed into the kitchen, only to be met by the stubborn wall that was her middle child.

"Right here and already aware of what your planning, Mother dearest."

"Too clever for your own good." Was the response she gave as she poked her daughter on the nose, kissing her on the forehead before slinking guiltily back to the living room. Matt had somehow managed to commandeer a spot on the sofa between the family pokémon in that time. Bear, the annoying little fur ball on one side propped up like she was queen of the household, while Princess remained splayed rather happily on the other, hogging whatever space was left and then some as she plopped her head rather demandingly into his lap.

"Always!"

"So how was your day?" she questioned giving both pokémon a fond scratch behind the ears before taking up a spot on the smaller one, pulling her laptop from its place to finish some work she'd had to start at the lab, but hadn't actually managed to get finished.

"Slow, boring… Really quiet."

"…" she nodded along silently, the repetitive clicking of the keys the only thing to break it, before she finally gathered enough of her thoughts not currently devoted to her work, to ask; "And Row?"

There was a frown there, and she watched with a growing sense of concern as her son's face twisted up in clear distress.

" _Really_ quiet." Unfortunately that wasn't very telling. Row was always quiet when she got in trouble, regardless of the reason. She'd hole herself up in her room, and it was honestly anyone's guess for when she came out. Normally though, it was usually whenever she was hungry or got thirsty enough, but she usually made a rather hasty retreat back to her room after she'd gotten whatever it had been she'd come down for in the first place. So it wasn't anything particularly new…

"But she's eaten, right?" Row always ate, even if it was one meal a day. She couldn't cook but, she'd always been able to scrounge something together.

"Honestly?" there was a beat of silence, and she nodded, looking her son in the eye. "I wouldn't know."

"How would you not know? You were told to stay at the house…"

"And I _did_. But while I was awake, Row never came down to my knowledge. I mean, I took a nap on the sofa for an hour or two, and she might've snuck in then but…"

"Not possible!" Kirsten's voice came echoing from somewhere in the kitchen, accentuated by the clatter of various pots and pans. Something hit the floor with a loud clatter, and the eighteen year old swore loudly before joining them in the living room with a frustrated huff. "I came home a little after he'd passed out, and I didn't catch her in the kitchen. Kiddo hasn't left her room at _all_ today."

"And you let her starve?"

" _No_ , no." the older girl shook her head rather violently, looking like her mother had just told her that that one boy down the street had just gotten married to a lady fifteen times his age. "I cooked something warm up, figuring she might be hungry, but she'd taken the chance while you and dad were gone to lock her bedroom door. I knocked, but she didn't answer… so I left the food on the floor."

"For the pokémon to eat?"

"Nah, they didn't touch it. Came up thirty minutes later to see if the plate was still there, and I don't think she even looked at it. It's in the fridge now, but she hasn't eaten-where are you going?" she stomped up the stairs with a huff, only pausing briefly to stare the two eldest down.

"I swear she gets this from the two of you." Was her only response as she grabbed the unbent hanger her husband had straightened out to pick the locks in the upstairs bedrooms.

* * *

She fiddled for a few seconds, cussed once, though she'd never admit to it aloud and practically swore to one of the legendary pokémon when she nicked a finger before the doorknob finally gave a satisfying click and turned.

What met her sight was a rather depressing thing. Her daughter sat huddled into her bed, covers wrapped around her tiny frame like a cocoon, and her computer flashing against pretty blue eyes rimmed red with clearly dried tears. There were a couple of empty soda cans she had half a mind to scold the girl about, but she'd come here for a reason and an unclean room could wait until she figured out what was going on.

"So both Matt and Kirsten tell me you haven't eaten anything?" dead silence, and she realized belatedly that the insistent, rhythmic humming in the air was coming from the earbuds she had jammed into both ears. Row had turned the volume up on whatever she'd been watching to max volume. "Arceus give me patience…" she mumbled under her breathe, walking further into the room, carefully picking her way passed the number of obstacles the child had strewn about before sitting on the bed and carefully yanking the cords out of her ears.

The look she got in return _had_ to have been something she'd picked up from her father. She was _almost_ intimidated.

"Don't give me that look young lady. You're already in trouble." She quickly reprimanded, shutting the computer by closing it before taking it and placing it on the nearby desk. She got a rather deep frown in return, but ignored it for more productive things. "Now, _someone_ in this room hasn't eaten today. Downstairs. Now."

"I'm not hungry." She mumbled, taking her cocoon of blankets and laying down. She huffed, knowing that was fat lie, and pulled the covers out of her grasp.

"That wasn't up for debate young lady. Besides, there is something I want to discuss with you, and it will _not_ be done with you playing metapod in your bed." She said, pushing her out of bed and guiding her downstairs with little choice in the matter. Her daughter would _not_ vegetate if she had anything to say about it, however badly the little one might've wanted to.

* * *

"Uh oh…" was the whispered response as they both came downstairs, her two eldest rather quick to disappear back upstairs. She rolled her eyes at their behavior, eyeballing the clock for a second to see how much time they would have to talk before her husband came home in a potentially foul mood.

"I've done a lot of thinking today, while at work. And I… I haven't quite decided yet, but I want to ask you a question." She said, fixing a sandwich and placing it in front of the girl. She only stared at it for a few seconds, before picking at the bread. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

It was a simple question, with a not so simple answer, and she'd probably heard it enough times at school. Most children younger than her daughter wouldn't have hesitated to answer, but…

Her daughter hadn't ever been like most children. Something in her brain just didn't seem to ever tick quite right when compared to other children around her age. Others would've said something along the lines of being a pokémon master, or a master coordinator, or an idol. Something bigger than what they currently were, someone famous and that other children would idolize when they eventually became _their_ age.

Most children would have been almost instantaneous in their responses…

Her daughter jut remained silent, still picking at the sandwich she'd been given.

"Row…"

"Don't know…"

"Of course you don't." and that was the problem really. The crux of the problem right then and there.

Row didn't _know_ what she wanted to be when she grew up. She didn't have a goal or a dream to aspire to. She just doing things to do them. Because she had to, or was supposed to, and never because she wanted to. And that just wasn't enough to get her through school.

She remember when they'd enrolled the now twelve year old girl, back when she'd been even tinier and had wanted to be a pokémon trainer. Not a master, but a trainer. Simple, and easy, something to look forward to when she was little. She hadn't necessarily wanted to be big and famous, but she had found pokémon so neat at the time.

It had come after she'd taken her to work with her one day, after her older brother had gone running off to a new region and her sister was off somewhere competing in something she'd just recently discovered and had fallen in love with almost instantly. Her husband had had work that day, and the professor had explicitly told her that it was okay. She didn't need to worry, or rush to find a babysitter at last minute. The lab pokémon would gladly keep a curious four year old busy.

The little girl had fallen in love almost instantly with the strange little creatures that played games with her so willingly, no matter how strange and nonsensical the rules had been.

So she'd enrolled her in the academy, the professor having pulled some strings to help. At the very least, even if she hadn't graduated, she would be prepared, and if her dream had ever changed she'd be able to stay, learning what she could in the less pokémon-intensive classes to one day be a productive member of society.

She'd thought that if Row had ever given up on that dream or changed her mind, she'd have found something else to fall in love with eventually…

Apparently that had been her first mistake in a growing list of them.

And she should've known better by now. Row did best when she had a goal to work towards, when she was doing something she loved. And right at the moment, there was really nothing about that academy, or any school for that matter, that Row loved or wanted anything to do with. So she was failing, horribly, and while it was easy to get her back on her feet, keeping her on her feet was becoming increasingly hard.

What was she going to do?

* * *

" _Problems at home?"_

" _Oh! Professor!"_

" _You've been sighing quite a lot over here, and staring at that picture of your family…" a kind smile, the professor always had a kind smile for them, gentle and understanding... "Which one is it this time? Matt giving you heart attacks with his pokémon training? Or is it Kirsten and her increasing issues with her friends?"_

 _Did she really talk about her family that much? She hadn't meant to. Family life and work life were supposed to stay separate. It wasn't very professional… "Or it is Row again?"_

 _Row again? It should never be Row again. Row shouldn't be a problem child, her baby shouldn't have ever been a point of stress like that. Her boss shouldn't have ever had to ask if it was "Row again."_

" _How?"_

" _She's the youngest, right? Row that is." She couldn't help but nod, stunned as she was. "It must be hard, being the youngest to two amazing trainers. Her sister's already so famous… And her brother! I hear he's been eating up the circuits lately… I still can't figure out how that boy manages to lose every competition he's competed in, when his pokémon are so clearly well-trained."_

" _They are amazing, aren't they?"_

" _And they started out so young too, you must be proud of them."_

" _I-I am… Especially with…"_

" _With how many mistakes you made when you were their age?"_

" _When I was younger. You know the story… I just…"_

" _You had an overbearing mother and was living in a bad place. You wanted out, and pokémon training was the key. Yeah, you had it rough, and people have done so for far more nobler reasons, but there are people out there who have made worse decisions for a lot less. You did what you thought was best at the time."_

" _Yeah, but those pokémon, I don't think they'll ever forgive me."_

" _Maybe not, but look where you are now! Three beautiful kids and a happy marriage… most of the time."_

" _We_ do _fight a lot, don't we?"_

" _Good, you're smiling."_

" _H-Huh?"_

" _The pokémon don't like it too much when you don't smile, it upsets them too, and they get concerned. You get so depressed so easily…"_

" _Sorry."_

" _Don't apologize… But… You know, you don't talk about Row nearly as much, can I hear about her?"_

" _What is there to say?"_

" _Depends on what you're willing to tell…"_

" _She's… she's the little bubble of life! You should see her. She's gotten so big since the last time she visited… And yet she's still so tiny. She laughs easily, smiles and her whole face lights up. She's got these songs she sings, and I swear I can't pin what kind is her favorite. She… she doesn't judge and is always so accepting…"_

" _But…"_

" _But she can be so mercurial sometimes… She's got her father's temper, my impatience, she's so gentle, and yet she can be so mean sometimes… She's got a vindictive streak the size of Mt. Coronet."_

" _She sounds interesting."_

" _She is… She's clever too, brilliant little cunning thing. I can't keep up with her sometimes. She's so quick-witted." She wasn't even going to get started on the 'Chip on your Shoulder' Incident… "She'll do something without thinking it through completely, and then just when you think she won't have a comeback she spits out these jokes and gets everyone in the room laughing. She's_ so _smart and yet…"_

" _And yet?"_

" _She's failing school, badly. And I can't figure out why or what to do… I see her drowning there, and it's like I don't know how to swim and she's too far out to save."_

" _But you want to try?"_

" _Badly… She's… She's so unlike her brother and sister…"_

" _Maybe that's the problem."_

" _Huh?"_

" _You and your husband, might be expecting more out of her than you think."_

" _Explain." She didn't like that tone._

" _Well…"_

" _No wells, just out with it. What do you mean?"_

" _Mattias is this up-n-coming tank of a pokémon trainer with a team that would make quite a few gym leaders jealous. He's got the skill, the talent, the charisma. He'd clearly go far and we both know it. A blind man could see it. And then there's your middle child, a star in the making. The day she wins a Grand Festival, it's over, she'll have the entire world in the palm of her hand. They set such high expectations… The bars been placed so high in its almost like mountain…"_

 _There's a brief pause, and she knew what the professor was doing, letting the words sink in. "And then there's little Row. Strange little Row, who is clever, and cunning, and brilliant, but is having difficulties in school, who isn't out on the road right now making a name for herself at age ten, like her siblings. Who is twelve as of late last year and still at home all but vegetating in her room…"_

" _I'm expecting too much of her?"_

" _Maybe… I don't know, I don't know Row well enough to be able to tell. All I know is that you want what's best for your youngest, and it seems like her best isn't something she's willing to give right now."_

" _What should I do?"_

" _Well… it_ is _April… And that day_ is _coming up relatively soon…"_

" _But Row…"_

" _True, Row seems to have lost her interest in pokémon training of any kind from what I can tell… But maybe that's just what she needs."_

" _We have pokémon at home though. Bear and Princess…"_

" _But she's grown up with those two around her since she was little, and they're not her responsibility. They're everyone else's."_

" _Do you think it would work? I mean… Row just…"_

" _Who knows, but it's worth a shot. Right?"_

" _I guess…"_

" _Here, how about this. Friday, next week, is the date. That's when all everyone will be showing up to get a pokémon and start their journey. There's gonna be a couple kids Row's age and older, as well as some that are younger. I'll reserve a spot for her, just in case. In the meantime, you think it over. Talk with her teachers maybe, see if there isn't something else they could do to help her. If you decide this is the better option, I'll get those pesky forms filled out and you bring her in. We'll get her started and on her feet, and well, we'll see if she can finally learn how to swim."_

" _O-Ok… Yes, ok. I'll… I'll talk about it with Vince and see what he thinks."_

* * *

Maybe… Maybe the professor was right…

It couldn't hurt to try, right?

* * *

A/N. So what do you guys think? This has to be the longest chapter I've written at 6443 words as of six words ago. And I'm pretty happy about it.

Anyways, as I was writing this I was listening to several songs including P!nk's Walk of Shame and Slut Like You, and Melanie Martinez's Mad Hatter from her recently released album of Cry Baby (YAY!)

Um… Just as a reminder, I _do_ need OCs for this story, ones that can fill roles like a "Rival" and maybe a few traveling companions, cuz this is _not_ a character cut out for traveling on her own without supervision of some kind just yet… All backgrounds of all kinds are welcome, but make sure their backstories are reasonable and within the realm of possibility. Nothing too outlandish, please.

Also, if you want a character with a legendary, ask first and make sure you have something that can take its place if I decide otherwise. A guide is in my bio if you need it, and I suggest at least giving it a look over so you know what I'm expecting to some degree.

Only leave OC Trainer Profiles in your reviews if you do not have an account on this website. If you do have an account, send them to my PM.

Anyways, please leave a review and see ya!


	2. Beginning of Adventures

**Disclaimer: I only own Row, everything else belongs to someone else!**

* * *

 **EP 02: Beginning of Adventures!**

* * *

Dinner was a normally quiet affair, between the pokémon sneaking snacks under the table and the constant noise of silverware hitting whatever the dishes were made of, it wasn't entirely unbearable.

Still, she was never one for complete silence, and this was bothering her far more than she'd like to admit…

"Mommy?" it probably wasn't the wisest choice she could have made that night. Only Arceus knew what her parents and Mr. Harts had talked about during that conference meeting. They'd left her home with her siblings after all, and hadn't said anything immediately upon coming home.

They'd just dispersed through the house, their mother making a beeline for the phone in the kitchen, and their father going out into the backyard to set _something_ up. He'd called her out roughly an hour later, and then proceeded to explain how to set up a campfire. That had been fun, if only she hadn't almost burned both their eyebrows off on her first and third attempt.

The second and fourth had gone a little more smoothly, and at one point she'd even had the audacity to call in help from the neighbor's growlithe, who gladly complied in return for a friendly scratch behind the ears. He'd found it funny, and had even ruffled her hair a little, but then her sister had finally gotten dinner done, and they'd both had to come inside before they set any more of the backyard on fire.

And now… everything was just really, really quiet.

"Mommy."

"Mom!" She almost jumped out of her seat as Kirsten stepped in, almost knocking her plate off the table altogether as she glared at the woman sitting next to their father.

She blinked up, and looked at them as if she'd completely forgotten they were there.

' _What is going on?'_

"Mommy?"

"Oh, Row, sweetie, you really should stop with that. You're becoming a big girl now, you need to stop going by such…" Such what? Baby terms? What did it matter? Mommy was Mommy, Daddy was Daddy.

They knew what she meant when she said them, and it wasn't like that was their sole title when she spoke to them. Mom, mama, mommy, dad, daddy. All more or less interchangeable, and she used them all with varying levels of occurrence. It was really just whatever word came out of her mouth first. She had never had to nitpick before…

" _Mommy_ , what's the matter?" she didn't mean to put such emphasis on it, but she had and it was far too late to back-pedal now.

"What do you mean?" She saw Matt frown out of the corner of her eye, and she knew what that meant. Her big brother didn't like their mother's oblivious act, and he might just start yelling. That wasn't a good idea with their father still in the room.

"Mom, you've been quiet, uncharacteristically so ever since you came back. What happened in that meeting?" The woman sighed, dark fingers fiddling with the pure white napkin she'd commandeered before sitting down.

"It's nothing, honest…"

"It's nothing my ass."

"Kirsten!"

"You guys come back from that meeting, and start acting weird! What happened?!"

"Kirsten, mind you language, your sister-!"

"Doesn't care! In case you haven't noticed, Dad's got the most creative vocabulary in the entire room! He swears around us _all_ the time, do any of _us_ look bothered by it?" the older girl sighed, dropping rather heavily into her seat before glaring at their mother. Did Kirsten always have to be so blunt? "Now what the hell is going on with you two?"

* * *

What could he say? That they were essentially sending their youngest away? That Row was going to become a pokémon trainer whether she liked the idea or not?

That the meeting was useless? That they'd talked themselves in circles for the better part of four hours and still hadn't come up with a solution? He didn't even _like_ the solution they were currently stuck in.

They were throwing Row in the water and telling her to swim. Forcing such a little thing into a role she almost definitely wasn't prepared for. Shortcut cleverness and quick wit aside, Row was _not_ pokémon trainer material. She could barely be held accountable for herself, let alone for six other additional little lives that would depend on her for everything, from proper training, to basic care and love.

He honestly wouldn't be shocked if he turned on the news one day to find that her corpse had been fished out of some gyarados infested river, because that _would_ be just her luck.

But as his wife said, he needed to keep faith. Keep faith and pray, because if this didn't put Row into an extended state of shock, well then, freezing up was something he probably wouldn't have to worry about with her.

This wasn't even something he was a hundred percent behind. Hell, he wasn't even twenty percent behind it. They'd never had to do this with Matt and Kirsten.

But Matt and Kirsten were _far_ more grounded than Row ever was. Row had several potential mental issues he hadn't quite been able to wrap his head around. The telltale signs in school that her teacher had noticed…

Row had attachment issues, plain and simple. Something not entirely crippling, save for the fact that it resulted in severe issues involving making connections with her classmates. They upset her once, maybe twice if she was feeling particularly gracious, and she just let them go. Let them slip right through her fingers without trying to fix anything. And it wasn't impossible to re-establish the connection, but Row's mercurial moods made it increasingly difficult for her to make and keep friends.

A psychiatrist, if they'd been present, probably would've pinned it on the constant traveling they'd done when the three of them had been younger. Moving around a lot did not foster deep, lasting connections after all, save for with one's immediate family.

But there hadn't been a trained psychiatrist, just a school counselor, and that person had been full of _shit_ as far as he'd been concerned.

The truth of the matter was something entirely different, probably. But the teacher and counselor both had been too busy picking apart their daughter's behavior, to even _think_ of considering her classmates.

His wife knew the truth of course, probably. Row told that woman almost everything. But neither had been inclined to say as much in that meeting. Too busy rolling their eyes and deciding that her teacher, as concerned as he was about her grades, was entirely too stupid to have a solution.

In all honesty, he didn't want Row walking the same dark path he had when he'd been around her age. The mistakes… the lies… the _darkness_.

He hadn't wanted any of that for her, and he'd made _sure_ that they couldn't follow him after he'd finally managed to knock himself onto to the straight and narrow.

There were just some demons not worth facing.

"We're sending Row on a pokémon journey." And he almost chocked on his diet soda. Did she really have to be that frank?

Dead silence, not even a whimper. And that serene smile on her face? He made jokes about his wife going crazy sometimes, but in that moment, he actually believed she might've. Clearly she'd lost it at some point without warning him if she was going to break potentially stressful news like _that_.

"Wait, what?" Kirsten was the first to recover, if only because she was probably the most used to unexpected happenings. When trying to a make a battle _pretty_ after all, some rather interesting outcomes were to be expected, if not entirely accounted for.

Row was next though her face had twisted into something that could not bode well for anyone currently at the table. And Matt… Matt actually looked ready to throttle his own mother, and it was an expression he could not stomach looking at for more than the second it took to actually register and find an emotion to pin to those narrowed brown eyes and clearly gritting teeth.

The clench of the fingers… In that moment, Matt was every bit his son, temper and all, and so reminiscent of when he'd been younger and just as easy to anger, just as volatile. It wasn't an easy thing to see, and he'd prefer if he never had to see it again.

"Matt, sit down and calm down before you hurt yourself." Or someone else, because that was just as likely to happen as well. He huffed like a tauros, turned a narrowed gaze at him, and it probably took all the respect the boy had for him to finally do as he was told and drop rather heavily into his seat.

His sister was less quick to snap her own gaping mouth shut, and she did so in such a way you could hear her teeth click together.

"Row's going on a pokémon journey?" was the final question that came tumbling out of her mouth. She visibly looked like she couldn't believe her own words, facial expression caught somewhere between confusion and genuine disbelief. "Since when? Row hasn't…"

"Since today, and I made the decision for her-?!" there was a slam, two hands coming down on the table and rattling the silverware and plates as Matt pushed himself up out of his chair with such speed he almost knocked the wooden structure over altogether. "Matt?"

"I can't believe you." And he watched as an angry teen that was far too much like his father stormed upstairs, leaving his food unfinished on the table. There was the faint, rather abrupt sound of a door slamming shut somewhere upstairs, and the room as a whole cascaded into absolute silence, half in disbelief and half in shock.

' _Since when did Matt have such a temper?'_

"Bear… Princess?" Both pokémon whimpered but came that little bit closer as Row broke the silence calling their names, picking up Matt's plate, and against her mother's own objections, began feeding her brother's left-overs to the two. They ate happily, glad to both have a distraction after that outburst and to being one as the twelve year old then proceeded to feed them what was left of her dinner as well.

"Row…"

"I'm done now. If I missed anything, feed it to Bear and Princess." She said, and she too disappeared, followed shortly after by her sister.

"Mine too!" Row would've probably gone to her room, if her sister hadn't caught her just outside the kitchen door, grabbing her by the shoulders and guiding her up the steps without a chance to object.

He knew where they going without having to ask or think too hard on the matter. Old habits die hard after all, and this had been something they'd always done when they were younger, before Matt and Kirsten had gotten their trainer's license and gone on their own respective journeys.

They'd had little meetings in Matt's room, talking about almost anything and everything. Matt would let Row sit in his lap, and then they'd play video games while Kirsten played the role of constantly changing traitor and ruin the game for whoever was currently in the lead. Or even wasn't.

The older girl took no prisoners after all.

* * *

"Matt, what the _fuck_ was that down there?!" Kirsten swore as she stormed into the room, dragging Row in and slamming the door shut with her foot.

She made Row find a spot to sit, and eventually her baby sister did what she'd always done when they had been younger and one of them was having a bad day and it was rubbing off on her.

She clambered into Matt's lap as if she was four again, claiming another of the video games Matt had borrowed without asking first, and turned it on to finish whatever mission Matt had gotten stuck on prior to dinner.

Matt watched in silence for a couple of minutes, arms wrapped rather loosely around their sister, and Kirsten found herself taking a seat on the bed as well, leaning rather heavily against their older brother's back and just letting the rhythmic clicking of the buttons and the techno-babble background music wash over her.

Nostalgia did wonders for people's moods after all.

"I can't…" Matt finally said as Row finished whatever mission she'd been on in record breaking time, causing their brother to smile rather proudly into her hair, so different from their parents who'd always wanted a little more out of Row. So very different, because Matt didn't care if Row was a successful business woman, trainer, or a cashier at the local pokémart

He just wanted to see Row happy; regardless of what it was exactly that she was happy doing. It was why he'd gone behind their parents' back on her sixth birthday, bought a crap ton of yarn, and spent six hours tangling and detangling themselves learning how to do Cat's Cradle with her in his room. Then he'd gone the extra mile and looked up a video of how to do Jacob's ladder with her as well.

"You can't what?"

"Why would they do that? Row…"

"It's exciting, isn't it?"

"For you and me, but Row's never even been outside of town before. The most traveling she's done was when she was little, when _we_ were little. And never outdoors. There was always a roof over our heads back then."

"Because our parents had more sense than to leave us outside where Row could wander off…"

"I wasn't that bad."

"Keep telling yourself that, Pipsqueak."

"Did they even ask you if you wanted to do this or not?"

"No."

"And what sense does our parents have again? Remind me?"

"Be glad Dad isn't up here right now… They're both too shocked at your yelling and slamming the table… What'd that poor table do to you anyways? It was just there."

"It stole my girlfriend." She blanched, looking at him like he'd lost his mind before finally figuring out a response to that.

"You don't have a girlfriend."

"Then it stole my boyfriend."

"Wait, you have a boyfriend?" Row questioned, and it took everything she had to not laugh right then and there. How could someone so brilliant be so oblivious sometimes?

"No, but _you_ believed me." Matt had no qualms with making his own amusement known, and he laughed squeezing that tiny little thing just that little bit harder.

"I hate you."

"Love you too, Kiddo." She decided then she'd miss this, this easy understanding that came between the three of them. Row's complete acceptance and bafflingly contradictory naïveté, Matt's sense of humor and just plainly how he cared so easily, the banter, the wit they traded like they breathe air.

She was going to miss a lot.

' _Arceus, Matt's right. What are our parents thinking?!'_ They… she didn't know what they could do to change their minds, their parents were so _stubborn_ it was almost painful. And their mother clearly thought this was the answer.

There'd be no changing opinions. There'd be no debates to be had, no ifs, no ands, no buts. Row was going to be on her own out there in that crazy wilderness and the chances of her surviving, regardless of what their father did, was slim to none.

Row just wasn't cut out for the real world like that, not at nine, not at ten, and damn sure not at _twelve_.

' _Would Row ever be ready?'_ She wasn't sure, but this could _not_ be the only way to figure that out…

Couldn't, but her parents had made it, and there was nothing either her or Matt could do to change it.

"We're all fucked."

"Kirsten."

"You're just as bad so shut up."

" _Must_ you cuss every time you feel like it?"

"Yes Rowie-dear," she mocked, a wide grin on her face. "It is a form of self-expression."

"I wonder how all those boys out there who think you're a princess would react if they found out their 'precious lady' swore worse than a sailor."

"Matt, shut up."

"Oh come on, you have to be a little curious."

"I don't even want to _think_ about all those fan-boys. Dear Arceus, if I'd known I'd be getting stalkers I wouldn't have _become_ a pokémon coordinator."

"But my big sis is a pretty princess."

"Row, you are really asking for a beating, aren't you?" They all burst into laughter, Row squealing as she lunged for the little shit of a brat in a half-hearted attempt at a noogie, only to miss her target entirely as Matt intervened and skillfully moved their little sister out of the way. "Traitor!"

"I will side with the little one until the miltank come home, I _like_ being able to find my shoes thank you very much."

"Arceus-damnit!"

"I win!-Arceus!"

They'd all miss this…

* * *

Friday came far too quickly for anyone's liking, and Row found herself in staunch agreement as she clung to her brother's back, watching as her parents went through her _finally_ -cleaned room making last minute additions to her backpack. Matt had his arm wrapped rather protectively around her shoulder, but she couldn't even bring herself to look at his angry, almost rebellious expression as she watched their father, mostly their father, pack away her clothes.

"Matt."

"Father." Father, not Dad, not Daddy. Father, in a bland, blunt tone that screamed of how angry he really was at the man.

Did they _have_ to fight like that?

Their father sighed, expression caught between two emotions she couldn't possibly name so soon after seeing them.

"Mattias Wielder," and here Matt actually had the audacity to roll his eyes, _'How did he get away with that?!'_ "You need to let Row go get dressed."

"No, I don't."

"You do. Now go downstairs, your sister has breakfast ready."

"Which one, the one you're sending away, or the one…" She flinched, eyes wide as she watched Matt's cheek turn bright red. How long had it been since she'd last seen their father hit Matt for getting smart with him? Years? Matt was a lot older, and once they were passed a certain age, their father seemed to shelve his corporal punishments.

She hadn't seen him hit Matt in a _long_ time. She'd thought Matt was too old.

Apparently not.

"Matt?" Matt didn't cry, not that she'd seen in a very long time. The tears were probably there, but Matt was the kind who liked to _look_ strong, even if they weren't feeling it at the moment. He wouldn't cry in front of her, but that didn't mean he didn't _want_ to. He was a bit of an idiot like that.

"It's… It's fine." _'No, it isn't. You're not okay with this at all, and I don't even…'_ What did one say in a situation like this? That everything would be okay? Don't worry, it'll all be fine?

She wasn't much of a liar, not normally. She didn't think she could make Matt believe those kinds of words no matter how often she said them.

What could she do?

"Row, get dressed, and make sure you're ready. We're leaving after breakfast."

"Okay." What else could she say?

* * *

She didn't want to be here.

Clad in a loose, long-sleeved shirt with a giant pokéball off to her left side and a gray lilac tank top underneath, and black leggings with a belt Kirsten had insisted she wear, and purple flats her sister had bought for her sometime during the week, apparently from a store that specialized in gear for pokémon trainers, she didn't _feel_ nearly as confident as the older girl had said she _looked_. But at best, she prayed she didn't look too much like a target.

She wasn't sure what she'd do exactly if someone challenged her to a pokémon battle, and from what she could overhear from the ten-some kids littering the area and talking with each other, they were _all_ a lot more into this whole thing than she herself was.

If her mother hadn't been standing off to the side, clad in full work regalia and eyeballing her in such a way that clearly stated that she had better stay within the building and not go gallivanting off into the city streets just outside the door, she very well might've done just that. As things currently stood though, she wasn't feeling anywhere near so brave, and so she'd pinned herself to a corner as far away from the other children as possible.

Most of them were ten years old from what she could drag out of her mother, but the rest all had ages varying from as young as eleven, to as old as fifteen in some cases. And there were a couple that had gotten special permission somehow, and were actually nine, and nowhere even _close_ to the legal ten years.

Her mother said that they probably wouldn't make it very far, since they were so young, as if ten, eleven, and twelve wasn't young at all, but there'd been little comment to make on her part.

 _Someone_ thought they'd been ready for this, clearly, and from the way all of them were behaving, they were all in complete agreement.

If only she could be so confident.

"Alright kids, the professor's a little busy at the moment with a surprise meeting, so we'll just be going on ahead without them. " one of her mother's co-workers came in, clad in the same starch white coat her mother wore, giant pockets galore and pushing a rattling metal cart through the otherwise quiet lobby.

The other children immediately crowded around, abandoning the few parents who'd shown up to supervise, if nothing else. But she hung back, not nearly so comfortable in the clusterfuck of a mob as the female lab assistant seemed to be, and in no way as eager to get her starter as the other kids were.

There was a fight or two that broke out, nothing physical, but just as loud as several children argued over who got what starter, but it all died rather quickly as the lab assistant began explaining the pokéballs.

"Now, now, we've made sure that there is more than enough pokémon so that you all can get the starters you want. And since this is a special occasion, we're allowing you to choose pokémon from every region, not just the ones that are typically given out in this one." And then she went on to explain the pokémon the children would get to choose from, starting with the ever popular, and typically docile grass-types, to the slightly more challenging fire-types, and finally, onto the smooth and slightly cocky water-types.

Eighteen pokémon species total, and at least two of each kind so the fighting wouldn't get too bad. There was a bit of brawl over the charmanders though, as a few particularly confident boys tried and failed to get one, only to lose them to two girls who'd been far more polite and kind in picking them. And so they'd had to settle for a chimchar and what her brother had once told her was a tepig. One of them decided that fire-types probably weren't even really for him, so he went with an oshawott instead.

It all was more or less background noise for her though, and she quickly grew bored at watching them nitpick through the types. A pokémon was a pokémon, no matter the species, what did it matter whether they had a charmander or a froakie? They were all good pokémon, they just had to be trained.

She decided that she'd just wait for the other children to leave before taking whatever was left over. Maybe, if she was lucky, there wouldn't be one and she could just go home and put all of this behind her.

Her mother wouldn't be _too_ mad if she just explored a little, right?

She shrugged and did so anyways, sliding rather quietly out of the room as her mother wound up having to intervene in yet another argument over starters, disappearing into one of the doorways and into the darker halls.

* * *

"Well shoe." Maybe this hadn't been her brightest idea, but between this and watching kids give each other black eyes over fire-types, this was probably the more entertaining of the two. That didn't change the fact that, while she wasn't completely so, she _was_ still more or less lost.

' _How does Mom even_ find _her way around this place? It's a maze!'_ she thought, staring at a door she was fairly certain she'd passed five times now, at least. They all kind of looked the same, and none of them had any fancy plaques or signs to quite say what they were supposed to be for exactly, or where they were supposed to lead.

It didn't help at all that she had been trying to make Jacob's ladder from memory while she'd been walking, and kept having to start over because she couldn't remember how to get to the cat's whiskers shape.

' _Speaking of…'_ She took a moment to focus back on the loop of string currently wrapped around most of her fingers, _'Okay, from step one; Pointer finger, pointer finger, drop both thumbs, grab the farthest string… and the two third closest… drop the pinkies… grab the second farthest with pinkies and drop the thumb this time?'_ "Oh!" she grinned, the cat's whiskers _finally_ wrapped around her pinkies and thumbs, before grabbing one the strings with both thumbs and pulling, having to pause for a second to grab the two second closest to her own body before flipping her hands out to reveal the finished product. _'Jacob's ladder.'_ She undid it, before starting over from scratch again.

"Goomy?"

"Goomy?" she repeated in shock, her face contorted in a clear show of confusion before she turned around, string game entirely forgotten on her still tangled fingers. A streak of irrational panic and fear shot up her spine when her eyes landed on empty air, and she almost screamed bloody murder when that same noise sounded again.

"Goomy!"

"W-Who's there?" she called, looking around and only just now noticing the prevalent darkness surrounding her. "Hello?"

"Goomy!" she cried out in shock, flailing widely for a split second, before _something_ came flying at her, blinding her completely and leaving her rather confused and frightened on the ground.

"Eck… ah…" she whimpered as whatever had attacked hopped down, nothing but a blur of purple and green as tears began to bead in her eyes. _'Don't cry… don't cry… don't cry!'_ she grimaced at herself as she wiped hurriedly at the tears before they could come out, taking a deep breath and beating herself up for crying at something _scaring_ her of all things.

It hadn't even been anything even remotely threatening, just a strange, blob of a creature she faintly recognized from her brother's pokédex. What was so scary about that?

' _Everything… everything was scary.'_ She frowned at that, eyes glued to the ground just before the creature and not quite focused on her surroundings until the pokémon in question shuffled a little closer.

"Goomy?" it tilted its head at her, all open concern and clear apologies. It was _sorry_ , it felt _guilty_. No one felt ever felt guilty for making her feel bad, and this little thing especially shouldn't feel guilty for her.

"It's okay, I'm fine…" her voice trembled though, shaky still, and her throat with the lump lodged so determinedly into it. _'I won't cry!'_ "You just scared me a little." She smiled, probably a little wobbly and pet the creature on the head for reassurance.

It had just been an accident after all, and she wasn't going to hold it against the little creature when it clearly hadn't known any better.

"Goo?"

"See?" and she rubbed quickly at her face, making sure the tears were gone before smiling as brightly as she could at the little creature. "No tears, no frowny faces. Just smiles." The pokémon seemed to only tentatively believe that, but it was all she needed to go on. "My name's Row, what's yours?"

"Goo… Goomy."

"Goomy? That's what you're called?" It made sense, in a slightly literal way she wouldn't dare contemplate too thoroughly, less she burst into uncontrollable giggles. Who named a pokémon species 'Goomy' anyways?

' _The little guy needs a better name.'_ She decided rather needlessly then, grinning in a way that probably would've put anyone who knew her better on edge. "Well, it's Gomu now." She said, the kind of surety that came with an answer that would not be questioned at all. The pokémon blinked at her in clear confusion for a good minute before it began hopping up and down, she herself unsure of whether it was in objection or celebration.

"Goomy!" was the only warning she got, right before it jumped at her face, obscuring her view once again. _'Oh… right, my glasses…'_ her mother would kill her if she ever found out, and she wasn't entirely sure how exactly she'd gotten out of the house without them, but she'd realized after a faint streak of panic that she didn't have them _again_ , not having used them for the last week since she typically didn't wear them around the house unless she absolutely needed them.

She was near-sighted, but most of the things she did around the house were things she kept rather close to her face, so she usually didn't bother with them at all if she could help it.

"Agh! Ok, ok, I get it! You're excited…" she finally managed to get out as it finally hopped back down, _smiling_ up at her as if she were its new best friend. _'Maybe I am.'_ She found herself grinning back, before she carefully picked herself up off the ground. She brushed herself to best of her ability, before shrugging when she decided it was too dark to rightly tell, and bending down to pick up Gomu so she could bring her new friend with her.

She probably wouldn't show him to her mother, or really leave the lab with the little guy. He wasn't a starter and he wasn't _hers_ to keep after all, but at the very least she'd have somebody to be lost _with_ , and in her opinion that was _far_ better than being lost all alone.

* * *

"This is Jacob's ladder, see?" She questioned as she showed the pokémon how to perform the rather tricky yarn pattern. He wouldn't be able to do it himself without fingers, but he seemed to be a rather clever pokémon, so she figured if he ever wanted to try, he'd probably figure out a way to.

Lack of appropriate appendages be damned.

"It's a little simple, I guess, but it's fun and I like it. I've always called it Cat's Cradle as a whole, but I don't know if that's the general term or what." She explained, doing it again just because she could as they rounded a corner.

"Goomy?"

"My big brother helped me learn how, and I'm better at it than he is, but he's pretty good too. He says I'm better because I learn by watching and mimicking, and since this is a very a hands-on thing, I have an easier time of it than he does. But he's technical like that. There's my big sister Kirsten too, but she's more of a show off than a show-and-learn."

"Goomy!"

"I also have a dad and a mom, but I'm a bit mad at them right now…"

"Goo?"

"They're making me become a pokémon trainer because I failed in school a bunch… But I… I'm actually pretty scared."

"Goo..." it was a bit… different, admitting it aloud like that. And even stranger still to have someone actually listening to what she had to say, even if it was just a pokémon.

"I don't know if I'm ready for that. I mean, I'll have these other little pokémon that will depend on me, and I… I don't think I'd do very well at it."

"Goo-goomy!" but Gomu wasn't _just_ a pokémon, was he? He was her new friend, and a great listener. Kind and actually pretty smart despite what her older brother had said about the species.

If he was her starter…

"Hey… Gomu?"

"Goo?"

"Row! There you are!" she winced, immediately panicking at the angry tone of the familiar voice, her mother appearing around the next corner and looking absolutely furious.

"M-Mama…"

"Row, what in the world were you thinking?! I take my eyes off you for a second, a second, and you wander off into the labs unsupervised without telling anyone! The other starters are almost gone, and here you are goofing off in the halls!"

"I'm sorry."

"Oh… just come on. The others are still waiting for you, as well as the professor." She'd forgotten about going back and getting a starter, even if she had been thinking about it a little. She'd thought she'd had time, but apparently she'd been very wrong.

"I'm sorry."

* * *

"Oh, there you are!" her mother sighed as they finally made it back, getting out of the maze of halls far quicker than it'd taken her to get lost, and arriving to a rather brilliant smile courtesy of her mother's boss.

"I'm so sorry about this…"

"Nonsense, better now than not at all, right?" they assured, and her mother smiled gratefully at the person before they turned to face her. "So you're Row, yes?"

She nodded, feeling a lot more shy than she normally would with a person she barely remembered. Where was Gomu? Where were her brother and sister? Why couldn't she hide behind her mother for once?

It would all be better than facing this person head on.

Certainly more comforting.

"I'm sorry, she's normally a lot more outgoing…"

"Anne, really, it's fine. Not everyone's always comfortable around people, and there _is_ a bit of a crowd present. She's probably embarrassed." The professor gave her mother another reassuring smile before turning back to her. "Now, I believe you haven't pick a starter yet. Correct?" they waited for her to nod, before motioning to the metal cart. "Well, most are gone, but there are still a few left. Do you want me to go over them for you?"

"N-No…" no, she didn't, because she didn't _want_ any of them. She really didn't care to be doing this at all. But no one was listening to her anyways, and no one had ever bothered to ask her own opinion on the matter.

"Goo?"

And dead silence ensued. Everyone turning their attention to the sudden noise that had cut through the silence once already. Her own eyes widened slightly and she couldn't help herself as she grinned. _'Gomu!'_ Relief flooded her system as she saw the familiar creature, thankful her new friend hadn't made himself quite so scarce when her mother had shown furious and angry at her for leaving.

"Oh, Goomy! What are you doing this far out? Normally you're with the other pokémon…"

"I want him." She interrupted rather loudly then, grinning as she rushed to pick up the pokémon in question, even as some of the other kids chuckled and laughed at her expense. She didn't care, and it didn't matter.

They could laugh and scoff their way out the building and till the miltank came home. Gomu would be her starter, no ifs, no ands, and no buts.

Her mother was less than thrilled, and about as equally amused at her choice though, and she looked about ready to wring her neck when she tried to object.

"But Row… Goomy is not a starter pokémon, and besides it's not…"

"No!" she wouldn't have it though. Gomu would be her starter, and she wasn't going to cooperate at all if she couldn't have him. "I want Gomu."

"Gomu…?" her mother questioned, but she ignored for the professor instead. In the end, reluctant as she was, they were to have the final say, since technically, Gomu was the labs and not hers.

' _Yet, not mine yet.'_

"Are you sure?" the professor asked, bending down so they were on _her_ level for once, instead of the level of most adults. How many had done that?

She nodded, grinning and proud as she held a little tighter to the pokémon's soft body. "You understand that you'll be starting at a bit of a disadvantage, yes? Goomy, or… Gomu, as you've apparently decided, is not a typical starter, nor is he the strongest pokémon around."

"I want Gomu as my starter." They nodded, even if it wasn't a straight answer, and took her plain stubbornness for whatever it was worth in his eyes.

"Alright, and what do you think Gomu?" the pokémon in question nodded his head happily along, and the professor smiled at her before picking up a pokédex and handing it to her. "Well, alright then."

"But professor!"

"Anne, _we_ signed her up for this, and the least we can do is let her have her pick. Even if it's not the typical starter, or the best choice for some. Clearly she thinks it is." Her mother sighed, frustration clear in her expression as she rubbed at her face, before stomping off to grab something red, white and round.

"Fine." The woman made sure to give an exaggerated frown though, just to show how displeased she was with this whole thing, before handing her the brown leather backpack she'd set down when she had first entered the building. "Here, and you better be taking this seriously."

"Yes ma'am." She nodded, pulling the bag over both shoulders, before taking Gomu's pokéball from one of the lab assistants, the squishy pokémon still in her arms.

* * *

They watched the rest of the children disperse, some pausing long enough to hug their parents, before leaving themselves, Row not quite sure where she wanted to go, and Gomu just happy to be along for the ride.

"Row…?" she frowned a little, turning to face her mother, not entirely sure of how she felt in that moment.

Angry? Sad? Scared? _Happy?_

She didn't know, and she wasn't about to nitpick her way through her own emotions. Her mother looked almost heartbroken though, as if she wasn't quite ready to let her go. _'Wasn't this her and Daddy's decision though? It was their idea.'_ She squeaked as her mother pulled her into a hug, tight and near inescapable, before she was finally let go.

"Be safe," her mother started with little warning, a broken smile on her face as she pulled her green hair into a fluffy ponytail at the top of her head. "Be careful, make sure to watch out when walking in really tall grass, and just keep an eye out for suspicious people. Don't talk to strangers too much, and by Arceus, check the map in your Poképad if you're not sure where you're going. Do you have your pokénav?"

"Yeah…"

"Then make sure to keep it charged… and call home, even if it's not often, alright?"

"O-Okay?" she wasn't sure… Could she do that when she still felt so angry with them both?

"Don't be afraid to ask your brother and sister for help and tips… Your dad loves you, even if he's terrible at saying it… And… and I love you too, so be careful." She breathed in loudly, lungs gasping for air from the sound of it, before bending down to look Gomu in the eye, giving the pokémon her best overprotective mother stare. "And _you_. I don't care if you _are_ the weakest dragon-type known to the universe. You will keep my baby girl safe, understand?"

"Goom!" the pokémon nodded determinedly and she found herself grinning at her mother's approval of her friend.

"Take care, _both_ of you." She finally said, before kissing her on the forehead, and waving.

She ran off with far more energy than she actually felt, still scared and still unsure of the future. But there was no going back at this point, and she wasn't entirely sure if she felt like she could even if she did have the option.

"We should go to Unova."

"Goom?"

"It's a bit far, and will probably take a while… but we should go there. I… I think it'd be fun… Don't you?"

"Goomy."

"Yeah, we'll go to Unova… And wherever else we please from there. And maybe we'll make new friends!"

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

* * *

A/N. So I've got three traveling companions and, as of yet, no rivals…

Anyways, in the next chapter we start off in Unova! How exciting! I hope you guys are enjoying the chapters so far, and thanks for reading! Please leave a review and see ya!


	3. The Bet

**Disclaimer: This is the child of a very busy mind with nothing quite so important to do. I own only Row, and Row's family. Any other OCs are potentially the property of my readers, and will be dictated as such when they appear. I do not own pokémon. If I did, Ash would be a girl, and she'd kick ass too.**

* * *

 **EP 03: The Bet**

* * *

It was in a rather large city somewhere closer to the coastline than she was honestly comfortable with, roughly three weeks and a lot of getting rather lost on purpose later that she'd realized her first mistake in what was probably going to be a _long_ list of them.

She'd forgotten to ask her mother for help getting to Unova, or at the very least a decent clue as to how to get there quickly.

It wasn't rocket science, she knew, and understood that fact. Traveling long distances wasn't an _entirely_ foreign concept to her, but she'd never done it on her own, and certainly not without adult supervision of some kind. Her father had been rather strict, if not a little overprotective when she'd been growing up, and he'd been just as bad with her older sister, and even their brother when _they'd_ been just as little.

She wasn't even going to try and remember how old she'd been when she first began to notice the restrictions she and her siblings had all been placed under growing up. How little they were allowed to explore, and even how small the area they had been allowed the privilege of doing so was. She hadn't minded at all of course, but it had come to bother her slightly whenever she'd heard the stories the other kids had to tell at school, of going places and the freedom they'd been allowed.

That opinion had just as quickly changed the instant she'd first seen one of her neighbor's, barely much older than herself at the time, get brought home in a police car for shoplifting from the local pokémart.

She remembered very clearly that she hadn't been entirely sure whether to consider them very brave or very stupid.

Now though, that was neither here nor even really there… She _wanted_ to leave for Unova, because while it wasn't all that far, to _her_ , it was far enough. A good start, if nothing else, to a journey that may or may not lead her to never even _think_ of home again. She still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that either.

Being sent away because you weren't good enough.

Even after her mother's words, it still felt sort of, a little bit like she was being abandoned. That couldn't have possibly been the case in a million years, her mother loved her maybe a little too much to bear the thought of doing something so callous. She loved all her kids too much to even entertain such a thought.

And she _knew_ her father loved her, even if he didn't always show it, or really ever. But still…

"This… maybe wasn't my most brilliantly thought out plan, was it Gomu?"

"Goo?" she questioned, feet shuffling across cement and the bright city lights all but blinding to her already blurred eyes. Her glasses… she hadn't really bothered making an attempt to get them before really leaving. She'd been too angry to try facing her father, who would probably be home at the time, to chance it like that.

Yes, she had probably been a little selfish, and more than a little childish, but she _was_ a child. She could be that way still, at least till the end of the year.

' _And then what will your excuse be?'_ A voice somewhere in the back of her head asked, taunting and snide, all the cynicism and sarcasm she made _sure_ to not show when around others because what could pass within her family was probably not always acceptable in public. _'"I'm a teenager!" "I'm only human!" Silly little girl!'_ And it sounded _far_ too much like the hidden thoughts she'd directed at her classmates whenever she saw them doing something that was sure to get them in trouble, the little hypocrite that she was with her own failing grades.

"Goo!"

"Ah! Gomu! Come back!" she cried, eyes wide in panic as the purple dragon-type leapt from her arms to skitter across the pavement, surprisingly fast for a creature with no legs. "Gomu!"

* * *

Her lungs burned, her ankles ached, and she was coming up an increasingly shorter amount of breathe each passing second she ran, but she couldn't give up just because everything hurt a little. Gomu was somewhere in this big city, outside of his pokéball, and any random Joe could _take_ him, and then she'd never see him again…

' _No!'_ "Gomu! Gomu, where are you? Gomu!" She felt the tears beading, frustration blurring her already poor vision as she pushed her way rather recklessly through a throng of people she honestly wanted to throttle for no other reason than that they were _there_ and _in her way_ and… _'Why don't any of you self-centered bastards HELP?!'_ Some of them gave her strange looks, like she was crazy and maybe she was, but in her own frantic state, she honestly couldn't care less what they thought.

They could jump off a cliff into the mythical Reverse World and be eaten by Giratina for all she cared in that moment. Good riddance, because that would certainly be far more productive than what they were currently doing.

Which was constantly _being_ in her way. "Gomu-Ack!"

"Hey, what's with all the screaming?!"

"Let go of me!"

"Whoa… cool it, Kid, just… calm down okay?"

"No! Let go!" she kicked, not even bothering to get a feel for who was holding her, any and all self-defense lessons she may or may not have mimicked from her father going straight out of her panicked brain as an arm clamped tightly around her right arm, keeping her roughly in place, despite her own breathless struggles. _'Does he not see that I'm busy?!'_

"H-Hey!"

"I said LET GO!" finally she managed to get a kick to land _somewhere_ , instead of uselessly flailing in the air, and she couldn't help the satisfied, perfectly vindicated grin that spread on her face when the _person_ almost keeled over in pain, hands covering the one part of the body she hadn't specifically been aiming for.

She'd take her victories where she could.

"Shit!"

"Asshole!" she cried, because for once, she didn't have to worry about her father or mother finding out that she'd just sworn at another human being she didn't even know. She took off into the crowd, leaving the person there where they kneeled, groaning and swearing a little more before realizing she'd been more or less gone, and swearing some more.

They followed her into the crowd, and for a moment she thought she wouldn't be able to escape them, so she did what she always did in high stress situations where she was fairly certain she would probably die.

She laughed, because laughing didn't make her feel nearly so nervous about the whole situation and it _helped_ , believe it or not. Helped her think just that little bit clearer.

' _People don't look up typically.'_ People didn't look up, fact, not fiction. Complete and total fact. When searching humans, for whatever reason, never looked above their own level unless they expected something to be there. And the same could be said for looking down.

You didn't look down unless you knew something might be there, and even then, it had to be something you were specifically looking for, otherwise it wouldn't even factor as a potential spot worth investigating.

Humans only looked at what they could see…

' _Oh…'_ If she was the kind of person to believe in something as vague and in-descript as perfection she might've thanked one of the legendary pokémon as she stood, or some formless powerful figure that humans made up because they didn't want to accept the fact that their world was by and large, controlled solely by powerful species of the very race they commanded on a day-to-day basis.

She wasn't that kind of person though, probably never would be, so she wouldn't even thank her lucky stars. But she did smile at the sight of the fire escape spiraling up the red brick side of the building.

"Why did I think this was a good idea?" She sighed, far more winded than she was comfortable being, and starting to really feel how badly she was pushing her body. Ever since she'd gotten sick when she'd been in second grade…

"Hey Kid!"

"Shit you don't give up!" she cried, grimacing at the sound of the voice of the person who'd first stopped her in the streets.

"Stop!"

"Fuck you, I'm not stupid!" she shouted down as she took off with a strange sound somewhere between a frustrated scream, a sigh, and what might constitute as a dying meowth. She could faintly hear the person swear again below her, but she wasn't about to chance waiting to see what they would do.

It'd only cause her to panic, and she was no climber, getting up these ladder-step-things was a lot harder than the movies made it look.

"Kid!"

"Leave me alone! Isn't this illegal or something?!" Seriously, wasn't it? She was pretty certain this could be counted as stalking, and of a minor at that, because the person on her tail certainly wasn't anywhere _close_ to being her own age.

"Admit to nothing!"

' _Wait… what?!'_

"Admit to nothing, deny everything, and make counter accusations whenever possible!" she froze, dumb as it probably was to do, she froze almost instantly. Those words…

It wasn't something she heard very often outside of her home, in fact it was something she only heard used exclusively in her family. It was one of her father's favorite "words of wisdoms". Along with several other gems that she typically kept close to her heart, if only because they made for great comebacks when the kids at school had felt like getting particularly smart with her.

"How-?"

"You're Matt's little sister, right?" the guy, really not even a man, he couldn't have been much older than her own brother, said looking for all intense and purposes like he really did want to throttle her maybe just a little for the pain she'd put him through. "Arceus, you have to be, you hit just like him!" he groaned, subtle blue hair falling to obscure cat yellow eyes.

"Matt?"

"Mattias Wielder, ring any bells? Or am I mistaking you because of that green hair?" Green hair? She didn't even know the guy's name, how in the world did she even know if Matt had really told the guy that phrase, or if he'd just memorized after getting on her brother's bad side and getting his ass handed to him, so he could get revenge later…

People were sore losers like that after all…

But few people ever noticed her hair, and fewer identified her by it. It wasn't really a good idea to encourage either, because her sister had green hair…

How did he even know?

"How?"

"Matt told me to keep an eye out for you, said he was worried because you didn't call home or come back to show off your new pokémon or anything… Wanted me to at least make sure you were okay, if I ever saw you…" he said, panting between every sentence he could bring himself to get a breath in. He swore under his breathe once more before continuing, "Arceus and all his crazy children! For someone with health issues who looks like they're having an asthma attack every time they run, you can fucking _sprint_. Matt lied."

"Matt does that." He really did, though he was absolute pants at it. And now that he mentioned her lack of stamina, she felt like collapsing right then and there. She might as well. This close a distance, and as winded as she was, her only hope would be to scream bloody murder and pray that either sent him careening to his own death or cause someone to come check and see what was going on.

She wasn't even going to _think_ about looking down to see how far the ground was from where she sat. She was already afraid of heights, and it'd do her no good to freeze up now.

"Yeah… well… What were you even doing there?"

"Depends, what do you mean? Cuz I was doing quite a lot." She was being maybe a bit smarmy, but she felt rather vindicated doing so. _Nothing_ at all had gone her way since she'd gotten into this damn city after starting such a stupid journey. She'd gotten chased through the streets of Arceus-forsaken city and then to top it all off, make her day absolute _splendid_ , Gomu had run off into the crowds and gotten lost…

' _Gomu…'_ And her heart broke into so many little pieces right at her feet. She hadn't even _known_ the little pokémon for that long, three weeks at most, but _already_ he'd become so important to her…

She didn't have attachment issues with pokémon, just with people, only with people, and she just _wished_ for once it was just _that_ easy to let go of the little guy like it'd been for all the kids she'd met growing up…

Why had he even run off-?

"You were calling that out…"

"Huh?"

"Gomu, that name. You were yelling it through the fucking streets. Is that someone important?"

"Gomu is Gomu…" It was all she could really say. What could she tell him after all? It wasn't nearly so easy as some might think. Gomu was special, a close friend that she'd made in an instant when she'd lost faith in ever making one again.

Gomu hadn't judged when she'd shared all her little secrets and all the honestly stupid things she found so interesting. Cat's Cradle, Jacob's ladder, her favorite story books, video games, the little questions she didn't ask because they were clearly stupid and no one would care to answer them no matter how legit _she_ thought they were.

"That doesn't answer my question." No, but it would be the best answer he'd get until she could pull her little broken self together enough to spit something better out at him.

The stranger sighed, hand coming up to brush rather frustratedly at his hair before huffing and finally straightening himself out. "The name's Ethan, Ethan Goldrige… A breeder…"

"You're not from around here…"

"Nope, the accent that bad?" actually, yes, it was, now that she had the mind to actually listen instead of cussing him out and fleeing. She could still understand what he was saying, but it was still rather thick, and that wasn't actually saying much considering how her sister claimed that heavy accents and baby talk were her second and third language. Though she'd never specified which was which.

"How do you know Matt?"

"Made the idiot mistake of challenging him with my weakest team, because I was feeling too cocky for my own good, and got my ass handed to me six ways to Sunday for the trouble." He spat out, grinning despite his own words. Did he really remember losing that fondly? "Your brother's an asshole by the way. A skilled asshole, but an asshole none the less. Not quite Red-level, but maybe… Red's cousin? He's certainly working up to a similar level…" that was probably not something she had been supposed to hear, but she wasn't about to call him on it when she was still beating herself up over getting so sidetracked as to forget _Gomu_.

She must've whimpered, or said something, she wasn't sure, but the guy, Ethan, actually gave her a concerned look, before motioning her down. "C'mon, let's get down to the main streets. Maybe we'll find who you were looking for…" he said, carefully pulling her down the last few steps when he realized that she was staunchly refusing to look where she was actually putting her feet. "There, now we're back on ground-level…"

"Goomy!"

"G-Gomu?" Something purple and slimy slammed rather bodily into the back of her head, almost sending her crashing to the ground if not for Ethan's own quick reflexes keeping her more or less on her feet.

"Ah?"

"G-Gomu!" She burst into tears than, uncaring as she squished the little blob of purple to her chest in relief. _'He didn't leave me! He didn't!'_ "Y-you… you little idiot! You came back!"

"Ah, so _that's_ Gomu… I was wondering…" the older teen grinned then, all mischief and a purrloin's sneak as he bent down to her new level and ruffled her hair in a far more familiar way than she was usually comfortable with.

"H-Huh?"

"Found the little guy meandering around the Pokémon Center looking really lost… thought he might've lost his trainer… Low and behold it's the little girl I see running across the town like she's lost her mind."

"S-Sorry for…"

"Kicking me? Don't worry, I got a friend or two who derive pleasure from causing me pain… Bunch of crazy sadists…"

She snorted, barely restraining the giggle that came with that image before bursting into uncontrollable peals of laughter. "And now I got a brat of a trainer laughing at my expense, Great, my life is the shit-end of somebody's bad joke."

"Arceus, you are vulgar."

"Shut it, your brother's almost as bad as me."

"Yeah, well Kirs has both of you beat by _miles_."

"Wait, she's really that bad?"

"Yep, and shameless too."

"And I thought he was joking…"

* * *

Surprisingly enough, despite the kick and making him chase her across the city for a good ten minutes, he was rather amicable to what had turned out to be a completely rookie trainer who might've been a bit in over her head on this one.

He'd brought her to a cheap little café that seemed comfortable enough in her own opinion, making sure they were both comfortable before ordering himself a coffee and her a soda, despite his own insistence on water.

"So… your parents decided to boot you out of the house, and make you become a pokémon trainer, just because you failed this big fancy academy they put in when you were little?"

"Yep,"

"And to maybe spite them a little, and because you got attached to the little guy pretty quickly, you picked Gomu as your starter, instead of one of the thirty six available, _traditional_ starters the professor of this region had on hand?"

"Yes."

"Well, no wonder your brother was so concerned."

"What does that mean?"

"Exactly what it probably sounds like to you. But for both our sakes, I'll be frank and just say straight out that, while I can see where your parents were coming from, I can also see why your brother was so against this."

"And?"

"And your parents didn't think this nearly as through as they probably should've. But at wits end as they probably felt like they were, this was the only solution they could come up with… I don't know what the professor was thinking myself of course, but who knows? Maybe they thought they saw something special in you…" she snorted at that.

Her? Special? When pignite grew wings and flew.

" _Anyways_ , you clearly aren't ready for this… Not completely, though I'll give your father props where they're due. He didn't do a half-bad job of prepping you to some degree at least… and _somebody_ clearly knew what they were doing when they packed your bags for you…" he sighed, rubbing at his face before just staring at the ceiling for a good few minutes. "It doesn't help that you literally picked the _weakest_ dragon-type known to the world as a whole…" And at _that_ she bristled. "Hey! I don't mean anything bad by it. I'm literally stating a fact!"

"And how is _that_ a fact?!"

"Just… listen, okay?" he waited for her to calm down, if only because she probably more likely to listen that way, before continuing. "Goomy, that's Gomu's species, is known, stat-wise, as the weakest dragon-type discovered thus far. It's not the weakest pokémon by far, but you're not going to be doing any impressing on the battlefield. His evolutions however are worth something a little more on the competitive side…"

She frowned at that. Did it really matter whether Gomu was strong like that? Yes, evolution was great when it happened, but she didn't think Gomu would need that to be strong. He was little now… And yes, he probably wasn't anything really impressive, but none of the starters usually were when you first started out. They had to be trained into something impressive.

Both her brother's froakie, and her sister's totodile had been the same way. Weak and a little silly too with how they'd always tried to look bigger than they actually were. But they had grown strong, even if at the end they had been wound up in their fully evolved forms.

' _Everyone starts out little and weak… even pokémon…'_ But that didn't mean Gomu couldn't be strong eventually. He didn't necessarily have to evolve if he didn't want to…

She grimaced as her mind spiraled around that thought, circling it like a hungry pyroar, her fingers clenched almost painfully in her lap, wringing out the hem of her shirt as her right foot tapped against the tiled floors. She wouldn't have noticed without having the attention to look in a mirror, but her eyes were flashing about, not focusing on anything on any particular that any one observer would've been able to pick out, but she wasn't even really _in_ the café at the moment.

At least not mentally.

* * *

Ethan watched with a growing sense of fascination, just imagining those metaphorical gears turning in the kid's head. You could practically _see_ her think, and it was kind of amazing…

"I'll make Gomu big."

Though, _that_ certainly hadn't been something he was expecting. 'Make Gomu big'? What did that even _mean_? Or…

' _You are an idiot.'_ It didn't matter what those words meant to _him_ , because if Matt had been right, like the bastard had been so far concerning the little brat that he'd sent him to go play babysitter for a few days, if only to put his "Big Brother Worries" to rest, than it didn't matter what the words meant, literally or even figuratively to _him_. Because they were probably nowhere near remotely close to the words actually meant to this greenette.

So what _did_ she mean by big?

"Big?"

"You said Gomu was weak."

"Yeah, because it's kind of the truth…"

"So what?" And he couldn't help but snort at that little gem of a comeback. Clearly she wasn't done explaining herself, because he was still missing a ton of her wrap-around logic.

"So what?" she nodded, grinning like the glameow who got the cream, before elaborating any further, her arms very telling as they hugged her precious starter just that little bit closer to her body.

"Gomu's little and… well, _weak_ … now, but so is everyone else! I'll make Gomu strong, while still keeping him little! ….If he doesn't mind of course." She chuckled at getting so easily carried away, and he watched as the little dragon-type in question actually let those words sink in, mulled them over, seriously _thought_ about them.

Whoever had said that the dragon-type species known as goomy were stupid clearly hadn't known what the hell they'd been talking about.

"Goomy!" the little guy finally cheered, beady eyes burning in determination. Clearly he liked the idea, and Ethan found himself rather wanting to go along with it.

"Right. I'll prove to you! Pokémon don't have to be big to be strong! They can be little too!" He knew that, knew it like he knew the back of his hand… but maybe…

"Fine, then let's make a bet…"

"A bet?"

"A bet. Nothing too complicated, and I promise nothing so rigid or stressful. I don't even really care about how you go about it. Become a master coordinator like your big sister, or a breeder like me, or even a champion like Cynthia. You could even become a Frontier Brain…"

"But?" she questioned him, an eyebrow quirked as she watched his face twist into an overexcited grin.

"Six years. Nothing too long, or too short. In six years' time, we'll meet back up here. In this city, at this exact time, in front of this here café, and we'll have a battle. If you can prove to me that you've made Gomu strong while still being _'little'_ as you've put it, I'll take back what I said about goomies being a weak species. I'll even apologize straight to Gomu's face." He explained, trying his best to not grin _too_ wildly, lest he turn her off the idea entirely.

The only way this kid was going to make it through this whole ordeal after all, would be if she had a goal of some kind, and what made a better goal than proving cocky assholes wrong? If he hadn't known any better, he'd have said that her brother made a career out of it, between challenging leagues and collecting gym badges.

Maybe... Maybe this little brat could too.

"Deal. _And,_ if I win, you have to kneel before the both of us, admit you're a lowly peasant! _And_ pledge your loyalty to the awesomeness that is Gomu the Amazing Goomy!" she said, getting maybe a little too carried away with this whole bet-thing for his own safety.

But he shook hands with her, feeling like he was probably actually going to wind up regretting this in the end.

"Deal."

* * *

"I don't even know where to start…" Some hours later had found the both of them staring out at the beach; Ethan watching her as Gomu allowed her to stretch his face to same rather comical proportions.

There was a beat of silence as the sound of waves lapping at the shore washed over them both, before Ethan broke it with a surprising degree of calmness, so contrary to the butterflies running amok in her stomach.

"Well, where were you originally planning to begin? Y'know, before the whole bet thing?"

"Unova." She'd said it with such surety, as if she was still planning on going… Honestly she wasn't entirely sure if she should, but it sounded nice. And the place had always held such an appeal when she heard her sister and brother tell stories about it.

It sounded so… she didn't know how to describe it, but at the very least she wanted to see it at least once.

"Unova?" She watched Ethan blink at her in slight shock, but it wasn't the rather negative kind she'd grown used to growing up.

She thought about it for a few more seconds, before finally deciding that yes, she had wanted to go to Unova, for various reasons, and that she would still go.

"Unova."

"That's pretty far."

"So?" she questioned, carefully picking herself around the railing to sit on it, legs and feet dangling off the side with Gomu settled rather neatly in her lap. "I'm not afraid to admit I like the idea of it, if nothing else."

"You've never been, right?"

"Not that I can remember." There was another beat of silence, and the sun sank even further into the horizon till the skies grew pitch black. "It's… actually kind of pretty."

"Yeah… hey… let's make an edit to that bet."

"Having second thoughts?"

"Nope, still sure I'm gonna win." Actually he wasn't, that loss against her brother had taught him to quit underestimating every trainer he met, even the little rookies who usually didn't have a lot of bite to them. "But let's change the location."

"To where?"

"Here. I think it'd be neat to have a battle with this sunset as the background, don't you?" he looked at her rather expectantly from his place leaning against the metal railing, and she couldn't say she didn't agree. It _did_ have that little charm to it, didn't it?

"Ok. Five years from now, this exact spot in this exact city, at just before sundown?"

"Yep, we'll have a battle with the setting sun watching us."

"And I'll make you eat your words about Gomu being weak." Ethan barked a laugh at that, giving her his best shit-eating grin as he pushed away, slipping something into her closest hand before disappearing into the crowd with a wave,

"Keep dreaming!"

"Asshole!" she yelled in return, hoping down from her perch as she watched the older trainer all but vanish in the crowd.

There was a beat of silence as she huffed slightly, arms crossed over her chest before remembering the object he'd handed her just before leaving. _'An envelope?'_ she was confused for a split second, before opening the white package and pulling out its contents.

"Tickets? To Unova?!" she blinked, absolutely bewildered at the pure coincidence of it all. There was no other way he could've known after all. She'd only just told him about her original plans after all.

And she hadn't told any of her family where she'd been headed to initially, even though she hadn't been quite sure how to get there at the time. _'How could he have…?'_ She'd have to ask him at some point, later and farther down the line.

Maybe after the bet?

"Goo?" she giggled, giving the dragon a pat on the head before turning to make her way to the town the tickets specified. She had a boat to catch after all…

And who knows where she'd go after that.

"What a suave ass, huh Gomu?"

"Goom."

* * *

 _ **Omake:**_

 _"Yo, dude, seriously do you_ know _what time it is over here?"_

"Sorry for waking you up Ol' Mr. Gym Leader..."

 _"First of all, you idiot, I'm not old, I'm three years older than you. Second, it's two in the morning._ Red _would have your ass strung if you pulled this shit with him!"_

"Which is why I didn't call him."

 _"Just get to the point you idiot!"_

"I need another set of those tickets..."

 _"What?"_

"I need another set-!"

 _"!#$ ! #$!"_

"H-Hey... C'mon, calm down..."

 _"They'll be there by Thursday, at the latest. Do_ not _lose these ones too."_

"I didn't lose them."

 _"Then what happened?!"_

"I gave them away. Bye Gym Leader!"

 _"E-kzztt"_

* * *

A/N. Shorter than I'd like, but I think I might try introducing one of the OCs tomorrow. The question is who?

Anyways, why the bet you ask? And who is Ethan Goldrige? Well, aside from the fact that I'm probably the least subtle thing in the room; to answer that first question, well…

Let's face it, Row isn't going to want to challenge the gyms of her own free will, and she's not a contest person despite what some of you may have been hoping for. But that doesn't mean she and her pokémon can't become strong. And besides, we needed a goal for our heroine, otherwise she's just sitting around shooting the breeze with a couple of people following her around.

So the bet. Her goal; make Gomu strong, even if he's little, and prove to Ethan that Gomu isn't weak like he says he is.

What do you guys think? Anyways, I hope you guys liked the chapter and thanks for reading! Please leave a review and see ya!


	4. Fateful Meetings?

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Row and her family! The OC featured here belongs to The Ne0 Production! Thanks so much for the help!**

* * *

 **EP 04: Fateful Meetings?**

* * *

The vast, blue ocean, the wingull riding the ocean breeze, the salty air… It all would've made for a very soothing atmosphere, being on a giant cruiser coasting somewhere off the shores of the Unova Region, gearing up to dock relatively soon, but in no clear rush to do so within the next three or so hours.

But that was just it.

They were on a _boat_ , in the middle of the _ocean_ , with the nearest piece of land that could constitute the ability to survive an indiscernible but nauseatingly long distance off.

And Row couldn't swim.

Not that she was afraid of the ocean itself per say. In all honesty, she _was_ , but "afraid" was a more… tamer term than what would be considered accurate. More like absolutely traumatized by it. She was fine with water on a normal basis, showers and baths never bothered her, and she'd never strayed from the temptation of crossing a semi-shallow river via some very spottily distant rocks that never made for the surest of footing.

But this was the middle of the ocean, and she had never learned how to swim properly. Too skittish and far from being brave enough, it was one of several fears she'd let be. Along with an irrational fear of most bug pokémon, though she had a strange fondness for the more spider-like ones and the bug/flying ones, and an irrational but entirely warranted fear of heights.

She wouldn't even dare to _look_ at a rollercoaster of any kind, much less contemplate the pros and cons of riding one, and elevators of any kind made her sick to her stomach.

Her mother had never bothered to understand any of her more erratic phobias, and her father had on more than one occasion laughed outright and mocked her for them, and she even had the man to blame for her outright refusal to get on those accursed, fast-paced death traps.

And escalators could go to hell…

She was getting off track, wasn't she?

"I hate the ocean…" she admitted aloud, if only to bring her mind off of the ever growing discomfort this whole scenario was putting her through. Did it _have_ to be a boat? "And I'm going to _kill_ Ethan!" To be honest, she'd decided that the first five seconds she'd spent on this accursed _thing_ , but it helped to re-establish one's ultimate goal in life… Bet with the King of all Assholes not withstanding… "How easy do you think it'd be to throttle him?" she asked, glancing up at the little dragon-type currently perched rather precariously on top of her head.

He'd gotten rather fussy when she carried him, and the top of her head provided a better vantage point than being nestled in her arms offered. And she was never one for large competitions or sticking to arguments, so she let him have his way. And it wasn't like he was heavy. In fact he weighed less than the one adult cousin she had who, while not appearing _unhealthily_ skinny, probably made a malnourished two year old seem fat by comparison. She certainly weighed less.

"Goo?" Gomu slid down to her shoulder, tilting his entire body, if only because he lacked a discernable head. Considering that at this stage, he was nothing more than a cute little blob, it made sense.

"You're probably right, not nearly painful enough." She agreed, scurrying up the nearest set of steps, so she wouldn't have to look at the ocean for too long and could remain in as oblivious a denial as possible. _'Ethan will suffer…'_ she wasn't even sure what exactly she should be more angry about; the surprise boat ride, or the pokémon _egg_ the sleazy bastard had slipped into her backpack without her noticing… _'How did he even manage that?!'_ she was still silently stewing about that one, even if she wouldn't ever admit out loud.

It wasn't even really that she was upset about the egg, because she at least had _some_ experience, even if it was only the few minutes her brother had allowed her to hold one before their mother had come storming in, looking unreasonably angry about the whole thing.

But the woman was somewhat strange in that regard. And she would probably never understand why she didn't like or want her interacting with baby pokémon. It probably had something to do with trust, but there was a large difference between a life and her schoolwork, and she'd helped with infants before… _'Mom-weirdness…'_ she chalked it up to that, and left the topic to be forgotten about entirely.

Just as well though, because she still didn't know what she was going to do with this egg. It was purple, a rather pretty shade she'd admit, but there were strange, eye-like markings spattered across the surface. Normally the patterns were how one could tell what the egg was going to hatch into… but then there were pokémon like eevee and zigzagoon, who according to her brother at the very least, had similar patterns egg-wise. So it wasn't always easy to tell what would come of it when they hatched…

Was she even ready for that kind of responsibility?

' _Note to self: Avoid all of my brother's friends when traveling. It will make my life so much easier…'_ she decided finally, rounding a corner that somehow led straight back to the deck of the ship. Just in time it seemed, as they finally pulled up on shore.

* * *

She was one of the first people off, if only because she hadn't had a lot to pack up to begin with, considering how sparse her enthusiasm had been for this entire affair. The crowds were hectic, she'd had to avoid getting stepped on or over twice in just the first few seconds alone, someone with a giant of a pokémon decided to let it out right in the midst of the crowd, and another two trainers who'd disembarked had immediately gotten into a pokémon battle over something relatively meaningless and stupid.

Someone had stepped on someone's shoe or something, and then someone had insulted someone else's mother, and it all went to shit from there. But she hadn't been paying attention to specifics.

In the end, she'd wound up lost on some random, overly crowded street with the midday sun beating down on her, and generally in one of her more depressive moods. She was hungry, tired, still a little wobbly on her feet, and she honestly missed home. Her brother had said once that this was the point where one normally called their mother at the very least, maybe even their father, but she'd sworn off that the instant said parent had told her to, and this wasn't a life or death situation.

She'd get through it, if only because home had always been a rather abstract thing to her that she'd never been able to define for herself, and she'd never bothered to ask anyone to give a definition of their own. Differing perspectives if nothing else.

"Goo…" she blinked then, her thoughts stuttering to a complete stop as she caught the faint telltale rumblings of a hungry stomach that wasn't her own. She looked down, and Gomu lay in some abstract shape of a puddle, looking for all the worlds, absolutely miserable and just as tired as she was.

They'd been walking for the better part of the day, and she couldn't blame him for an instant.

"I'm sorry," she apologized then, all empathy as she bent over to pick the little creature up and carry him along. At the very least, she could pray, even if she didn't believe in anything such as a "god", that no one would challenge her to a battle. She'd been lucky so far, considering all of her experience amounted to nothing more than the occasional battle with a wild pokémon along the way, and nearly none with another trainer's pokémon, she doubted it would last long though.

"Goo…"

"So what are we hungry for? Hmm…" she didn't have a lot in the way of money, only an additional two thousand pokédollars to her name thanks to her brother, on top of the initial three thousand most starting trainers got unless they were either spoiled rotten and/or filthy rich.

And the thought of that was so hilarious that she almost forgot her previous misery. She couldn't help remembering the one trainer, a young boy only a few years older than she was now, way in over his head and thinking the world owed him when in reality it hadn't. He'd thought pokémon battling was easy, that training was simple and his birthday presents were almighty and undefeatable. Her brother had been more than happy to prove the boy wrong, and he'd thrown a temper tantrum that could outrival any cranky three year old when the little rich boy had lost the battle so spectacularly she'd laughed herself practically comatose.

Now there were no rich, overconfident boys to lighten her mood with their blatant idiocy, and her brother wasn't around to help her crack jokes at their expense…

"Hey kid!" she froze, if only because she hated being called a kid by anyone who wasn't family, Ethan being a rare exception because he apparently knew her brother…

"Hmm?" she frowned, looking at the man… not even man really, approaching her. He was young, dull blonde hair just shy a shade or two of being beach blonde, and had startling blue eyes, so unlike her own which were a much darker shade. His hair was swept back with some kind of gel-like substance, and he was clad in what had to be designer and highly expensive clothes.

A suit ironically, and someone way above her had to be laughing at her expense.

Or rather, _with_ her, because she was practically cackling at that point, much to the young boy's own very apparent chagrin. She probably looked crazy, and she certainly felt a little crazy, but that was normal when she hungry and tired, the two never did combine well for her.

He sniffed, all indignation and clearly affronted at her reaction, and that only made it worse, sending her into another loud peal of laughter just as she'd finally calmed down from the first one.

"I-I'm sorry…" she managed to get out, just before she almost killed over from how badly she had it at that moment. _'Dear Arceus, write on my tombstone, I died fighting purple squirrels and dragon-breathing, rainbow farting unicorns.'_ She decided that would be a good epitaph or whatever the correct term was, if nothing else. Pure comedy at its finest, if only because it would confuse the living hell out of anyone who read it.

Because Pretty Rich Boy was going to kill her in the next five seconds, she was certain.

"How utterly uncouth and… peasant of you." Oh Arceus, if _he_ didn't kill her, his vocabulary certainly would. Uncouth? Peasant? She wouldn't die of purple squirrels and dragon-breathing unicorns, she'd die of laughter in the streets of Castelia City listening to some pretty, rich boy with a fancy vocabulary talk at her for however long he thought she'd be listening.

"Dude, this whole conversation would probably be going a lot better if you just _stopped_ talking." She told him straight out, completely unapologetic and purposefully shameless. Gomu had fallen asleep in her arms, exhaustion and boredom making for a lethal combination when compared to the poor things hunger, and she wished she could be him for a few seconds, if only because she'd be able to escape from this whole situation before she dug her grave any deeper than it already was. _'Just a couple more feet and it might just be up to legal standards for the regions…'_

"My name is not ' _Dude'_ ," he informed her, face twisted into a righteous scowl, and she laughed all the harder for that. Could anyone blame her? He spoke it like he was trying to pronounce a foreign word for the first time in a different language entirely from the original two. "It is Jameson. And you'll do best to remember it Peasant Girl."

She snorted, barking out a sharp laughter that actually had the guy flinching.

"I will when you show some respect!" she snarked back, rather easily. She'd always had a little more bite when it came to people insulting her, and calling her _that_ certainly wasn't going to help this boy's case any. "How about this Pretty Boy, I'll call you by _your_ name, when you prove to me you can go more than five seconds without opening that mouth of yours and sounding pretentious." She declared, pointing at him and looking down at him in such a way you would've thought the roles were reversed. _'Just for that comment I'm taking the rich part out and just calling you Pretty Boy.'_

Yes, she was being petty.

Yes, she knew she was being petty.

For once, in all of her twelve years of life, she looked positively challenging. If he wanted a battle fine, she'd give him one, even if she did wind up losing. She'd make up for it with all the insults she could think to fling. There was a reason her mother stopped trying to have verbal spars with her after all, the poor thing couldn't keep up with her special kind of banter.

Her mother had always said she was a little too quick at times.

"Why you… That is it! Peasant Girl! I challenge you to a battle!" and maybe she was also a little too good at predicting things. "For my families honor!"

"Clearly we have no clue how to challenge a person to a battle like a normal human being…" she sighed, walking a bit before she turned back around and placed Gomu on the ground. She nudged him gently, prodding until he stirred and blinked at her in curiosity. "Sorry Gomu, but I picked a bit of a fight. Feeling up for it, or should I just run at the nearest available chance?" actually, nearest available would be any of the following seconds, because the boy was clearly too slow to react if she were to suddenly play coward and run.

"Goo!" he gave her his best determined expression, before pulling himself together and glaring Pretty Boy down.

Said pretty boy simply scoffed, looking even more affronted than before by the sight of Gomu.

"Ha!" he laughed, hands suddenly on his waist and sneering at the both of them. "You dare speak that way to one so high as me? And yet you have such a blatantly weak pokémon! Certainly you must have _someone_ even just a little stronger!"

"Nope!" she grinned, her answer instant as she folded her hands behind her back, rocking slightly on her heels as she watched his expression twist in distaste. "I just started out and haven't captured any pokémon yet! Gomu's my only one, aside from my egg of course…" her face twisted into something honestly unholy as her eyes narrowed slightly at him, her grin stretching just that slightest bit needed for her to turn it into something unpleasant. She'd learned it from her sister, who while a coordinator at heart, had been quite the sadistic pokémon trainer for a good year and a half before that.

She was apparently not the most pleasant thing to ever get into a battle with. She liked to pick on her opponents too much.

"WHAT?!"

"Oh! Guess what! Not only are you pretentious now!" she cut him off, feigning realization and shock as she continued, "You're also a bully picking on a less experienced trainer! How proud your family must be of one so honorable as you!" she was mocking him, openly and cruely but she was also hungry, and while he'd been funny at first, this whole charade was starting to tap dance rather happily along her last nerve. She was hungry, and most of her family could vouch for how foul she could get when she hadn't been fed.

It hadn't helped his case at all that he'd insulted Gomu. That was just a general no-no in her book.

"Begin!" he growled, wisely not saying anything else for once before tossing his own pokéball into the air. It flashed open with a near blinding bright light, especially considering that the sun had set in such a way that it was almost directly behind the other. Something big came out, as the ground shook beneath her feet, and she decided that while she'd been picking a little earlier, he really was a bully.

A giant of a pokémon, against Gomu…

Well if she was gonna start with this bet, the best time would be now at the very least. She just hoped Gomu would forgive her if they lost this really badly.

"Rhyperior!" the rock-type roared its appearance, looking around for its challenge only to frown at the sight of the little dragon-type that was to be its opponent. "I'll teach you respect yet, Peasant Girl!" its trainer called, but she didn't think the boy would succeed by much if the expression said titan was wearing was anything to go by.

It _looked_ like it wanted to squish the boy for calling it out for such a clearly inexperienced, even if determined opponent. And simply snorted and turned away.

She felt a little insulted by that to be honest.

"Get ready Gomu!" she instructed, bending down to the little guy's level. He chirped his response before turning back to their opponent, trying his best to look fierce despite how non-threatening he admittedly was.

"Rhyperior! Show this brat who her betters really are! Rock Wrecker!"

* * *

" _You're taking a vacation?" Open bewilderment, stunned expression, she kind of wished she had a camera so she could take a picture of it. How often was it that the unflappable Ian looked genuinely surprised about something?_

 _The young man after all was the king of pokerfaced lying and subtle manipulation. If life was a cartoon, and he ever decided to go off the straight and narrow, the whole entire world would be screwed. He'd be the kind of villain that won, if only because he had the brains to not monologue in front of his enemies._

" _Yes, that's what I just said…" she nodded, grinning like the cat that caught the canary. "What? Did you suddenly forget how to speak Heian*?"_

" _Bitch." He muttered, if only for the sake of his pride, and a tanned hand came up to brush at ruffled locks of brown hair. He huffed, crossing his arms and his eyes narrowed in warning at her before he continued. "I didn't forget anything. You're the one who doesn't know what a break is."_

" _A break? You mean a moment of time one takes to relax when performing a lengthy task? Or a break as in someone just stole something from the building? Or are you referring to when one damages an object or the object malfunctions?" she grinned again, lips stretching wide across her face as Ian glared her down._

" _What even brought this on anyways?" She paused, staring at the ground and her own black leather boots for a few seconds, eyes fixating on the gleam of the silver plated buckles as they caught the shine of the lights overhead. "Normally you're all work and… well maybe a lot of play in the form of picking on the customers."_

" _This coming from the one man who is usually telling me to take a break?"_

" _It's just a surprise, I never thought you listened to me…"_

" _I don't." she admitted, plainly and maybe far too bluntly. Ian took it in stride though and she watched him as his expression twisted in thought, an easy smirk on her lips. "But maybe, for once, you're right." She contemplated backtracking on that comment the very next second._

" _Me? Right? Yo, Cassy! Go mark this day on the calender!"_

" _Why?" came a slightly squeaky, nasally voice, platinum blonde hair peaked out from behind a door, the style some big poufy style that looked like something straight out of an old reality TV show. And the make-up… One of these days she really needed to remember to tell Cassy to tone it done a bit._

 _The woman didn't_ _ **need**_ _to look like a clown for their job, and a little eyeliner could go a long way compared to the practical mask she had caked on to her face._

" _The great and almighty Seer," she rolled her eyes at that. Great and almighty? Did he have to be that sarcastic? "Just admitted I was right!"_

" _Is the world coming to an end or something?"_

" _All of you shut up before I fire your asses!" she barked, kicking Ian in the leg before standing up to go and check what all the smoke coming from the kitchen was about. If Amy burnt the food again she was going to throttle that little brat._

 _Ian cackled madly, his more sardonic nature showing, and he grinned at her roguishly before scampering off to one of the dealing tables, probably to terrorize some of the players into losing all of their betting money thus far. He was good at that, frighteningly so, and even better at convincing them to play more._

" _Fine!" he called over his shoulder, eying the more naïve and inexperienced players currently caught up in a game of poker and blackjack. "Just make sure not to get too lost that you don't come back!"_

 _Seer huffed, rolling her eyes again before rolling her way off the couch to the indoor battlefields. Some rough and tumble trainer was looking for a battle, and was offering a pretty large sum if he just so happened to lose._

" _I make no promises!"_

* * *

" _ **Ladies and gentlemen, *bzzt* we will be arriving in Castelia City Station soon. *krck* Please make sure that *bzzt-krck* bags before leaving. And *thnk* make sure that you have all of your belongings with you before leaving. We will be arriving in Castelia City station in thirty minutes. Thank you. *brzzt-crsh*"**_

Seer groaned, body aching uncomfortably as she stretched until she heard several things pop at roughly the same time along her spine, yawning as she squinted at the scenery blurring by the window. The announcement had blurred rather effectively with her dreams, and between that and the horrendous audio quality the speakers boasted, it'd made for a rather unintelligible speech. She wasn't entirely sure what had been said, but a quick glance outdoors confirmed that either they'd been held up for some obscure reason or they were closing in on their destination.

She'd like it if the latter were the case…

"Noel, come on, it's time to get up." She huffed, pushing at the large grass-type good naturedly before she managed to get herself up off the seat. She linked her hands together, doing her best to stretch her arms out until she wound up balancing rather precariously on her toes. Noel huffed in response, giving her a rather warning gaze, before collecting her bag and double checking to make sure all of her pokémon were present and accounted for.

The large reptile handed it to her afterwards with a nod, and she took it, easily swinging it over her shoulder as she made sure her forest green high shoes were buckled and zipped up properly before correcting her skirt and camisole, taking a moment to bounce from one foot to another before they both made a rather graceless near tumble to the floor. The train had come to a rather sudden stop without warning, and the breaks were a lot harsher then when one sat down.

Outside, she could finally see the neon lights and darkening city air that was Castelia somewhere between late afternoon and near evening.

"Well, let's go."

* * *

"Y'know," she paused, eyeballing several restaurants that were ungodly expensive despite the widely known fact that the portions were less than satisfactory. Something about them being gourmet and somehow, in someone's mind, that gave a good enough excuse for questionable food she wouldn't feed to a poison-type. "Castelia is a lot quieter than I expected…" she let that hang for a moment in the air, an observation of nothing more substantial than stale bread really. But it was true.

Maybe they'd somehow managed to miss the rush hour entirely, but in a place such as this, people seldom slept, she knew. _Someone_ was always up at one point of the day or another. And yet there was a surprisingly low amount of people on the streets compared to Nimbasa and several other places she'd visited while on her self-induced "vacation".

And it struck her as a little odd, if not outright curious a sight.

Not to say that there _weren't_ people, but there certainly weren't as many as would be considered normal possibly, or maybe this _was_ normal and she was just more used to a city that never seemed to sleep.

Crowds dotted the sidewalk of course, and here and there, and more or less spattered around were the occasional shady figure that was best avoided at all costs. Last thing she needed was to be arrested for "buying" contraband and illegal goods from suspicious people in stereotypical long trench coats that looked and _smelt_ like they'd been fished out of a garbage bin filled with week old milk.

"Scept!" she sighed, turning to look at Noel, her expression a mixture between obvious amusement and fake exasperation. He was giving her a rather stubborn look, and it was clear as day that the poor dear was hungry. But she didn't want to spend more money than she had to, and they both knew it, so he'd have to be a little more patient with her.

"We'll find a place that'll serve a big meal worth what it costs, ok?" she grinned down at the grass-type, consciously glad that the night was so much less clear in the city than it would be a small town.

That's why she liked cities, too many lights to notice that it was way past the time when the sun went down. And cities that never slept were the best.

She turned back to staring down the signs, looking for something that wasn't in a language commonly used in Kalos and therefore far more costly on the wallet, before something caught the corner of her eye.

A group of people, small in number but obvious all the same; clad in strange black outfits that looked like something straight out of a bad cartoon. There was some kind of symbol on the chest area, upper left corner right above the heart, and if she wasn't going completely blind, it was black and white, or maybe gray, with a "P" overlaying what might've been the letter "Z" in some off shade of baby blue. They looked hostile, and were looking around rapidly, as if they were up to something.

And clearly they were because every time anything even remotely close to the sound of an actual police siren sounded over the otherwise quiet city air, they all practically jumped right out of their skins.

If she'd been feeling a little more brave, she might've called them out on their strange behavior, but as things were, she would leave them be. People were weird sometimes, and they probably weren't actually doing anything illegal.

Probably.

' _Sometimes it's best to just leave well enough alone…'_ she decided, continuing down the sidewalk and dodging past a few people simply milling about. A car zoomed past just a few feet away, and she found herself silently cursing the terrible drivers that existed in the city, all impatience and in a rush to get nowhere rather quickly…

"Oh… hey, Noel, what do you think of this place?" she questioned, turning back to face her starter only to blink in shock when her eyes landed on empty space. There was a moment of absolute terror and panic, as she realized that the sceptile wasn't anywhere in sight.

Had those strange people taken him? And if so _where_ had they taken him and how in the world had they done so without her noticing. Noel wouldn't have just gone silently along with them like that, even if they had threatened her life. "Noel? Noel, where are you?" she asked, praying that the grass-type would make some kind of noise as she darted back the way she had come.

All was silent for a few seconds, and she wasn't entirely sure what she was going to do, but all the tenseness left as her eyes landed on the familiar figure, spotting the lean green body of her starter in front of a restaurant, staring rather fixatedly at something on the other side of the window.

Had he found something he wanted to try or…? She frowned, walking over and watching him for a few seconds before attempting to trace his gaze to whatever he was looking at.

The place was busy, packed a number of people, and just as many dishes, mostly different, so it took her a few seconds before she realized that he wasn't looking at a dish at all…

He was looking at a person.

A kid to be specific, but a bit of a strange one from what she could see. Definitely not from this region, though considering what she knew of the others, it was entirely possible that she could actually be from any of them. Green hair wasn't a very common feature no matter where you were, supposedly… There were a few here and there of course, one of the gym leaders for this very region came to mind rather easily, and if she remembered correctly, one of the Elite Four in Sinnoh had green hair.

There was also Bugsy, another gym leader, that most people knew of for his expertise on bug-types… and she stopped the list there, if only to make sure Noel didn't wander off again.

She was clad in a rather stylish outfit, though clearly it was something that had been bought in a trainer's store. Subtle and not _too_ big or cumbersome, though the shirt had clearly been bought in the wrong size. Or maybe to the kid it'd been the right size, she wasn't going to nitpick. And the kid couldn't have been older than ten at most. And even then, she was being rather gracious.

The kid was _tiny_ , disconcertingly so, and a part of her wanted to storm in and see where her parents were. It didn't help at all that she had her shoulders hunched and her whole form shrank in to itself. Uncomfortable would've been an understatement, but it _was_ the first word to come to mind.

But all the same, she was clearly a trainer of some kind. There was a little dragon-type she recognized as a goomy nestled into her side, and from a rather strange angle, she could see what might've been a pokémon egg but could've just as easily been a toy or something nestled in the kid's lap. _'But that doesn't explain why Noel stopped to look at this kid-oh…'_ And then she saw it, the one little trait that had drawn her starter's attention so easily.

The kid's eyes.

Not the color of course, because, while it wasn't such a common shade for people like this kid, it also wasn't very astonishing either. It was the look they had in them. That empty look that made it all too easy to replace this scrawny little thing with memories of an entirely different little girl who'd given up hope far too soon. Eyes that couldn't find a thing to care for in this world anymore after already having had it spit in their face far too often…

Could she change those eyes like someone had changed her own?

It was a stupid idea, and the kid wasn't her responsibility and whatever the little girl was going through certainly wasn't any of her business. But apathy was a painful thing, especially when one had to go through it all alone. Maybe she could save the kid, or at least keep her from completely drowning.

She walked in, hunger and a need to do or say _something_ at the very least driving her forward through her own reservations, and plomped down into the seat across from her, as loudly and rudely as humanly possible.

The kid snapped her attention up at her almost instantly, not even fumbling the egg, though she was certain that she'd forgotten about it completely at some point, and _glared_ at her, openly and filled with suspicion. But she was alert, and that was all the help she needed to fan that little flame of hope. _'Maybe the kid wasn't beyond saving…'_ "Hi."

* * *

A/N. Chapter finished _finally_! That was a bit of a pain. I wasn't sure how I wanted to start it at first, or even what exactly I wanted to happen. But I knew I wanted an OC to appear at the very least. And now I am happy. New OC, happy authoress, hopefully happy readers!

Speaking of happy readers, thanks for reading and I really do hope you all enjoyed the chapter! Please leave a review and tell me what you guys think! See ya!


	5. Lost in Pinwheel Forest

**Disclaimer: I own nothing except Row and her family, unless otherwise stated.**

* * *

 **EP 05: Lost in Pinwheel Forest**

* * *

"So where do you want to go next?" the question was innocent enough, and certainly shouldn't have garnered any sort of reaction along the lines of surprise. But she still hadn't been expecting it when the newest addition to her ragtag group of one pokémon, a little girl, and an egg turned towards her.

Anything, really, would've been a better and easier question for her to answer. If she'd known where she wanted to go she would've been there already, maybe. That was why she'd been more or less bumming it around in Castelia when the lady, no Seer, had found her. Why leave when there was no place to go?

Or that had been her understanding of her own situation at the very least. She had never been the best at planning, or actually at all, really. She'd usually just made it up as she went, but in this case, that method probably wouldn't work so well. She had to change her approach, but where to begin and where to stop?

She had to win the bet, so that meant battles, but Ethan had given her the freedom to go about training Gomu whichever way she wanted.

Gym battles were the immediate answer, something that had proven time and time again that if one competed, typically their pokémon got stronger. Though in immediate hindsight, that was probably overly simplifying everything.

One didn't win gym battles, beat the fully trained leaders, just be showing up with any old pokémon and challenge them. If her brother and the number of sometimes frightening scars he had was any indication, it was a lot of hard work and a lot of pain on both the trainer's and pokémon's part. And a lot of extremely dangerous situations that could turn out a lot worse than they actually did half the time.

Coordinating was also another option. Her sister was a slightly special case in that she'd challenged gyms for several years before she had entered the contest circuit, but generally a top rank coordinator was just about as strong as any well-known and highly respected pokémon trainer. Some gym leaders even competed in contests as a side-gig of sorts.

Pokémon rangers didn't really battle if they didn't have to. So strength of a pokémon was more or less a secondary concern, and she didn't understand enough about breeders other than that they "raised" pokémon in a slightly different manner than what a trainer or a coordinator did.

Sommeliers didn't really battle all that much either to her knowledge…

So that left the league challenges and coordinating. Neither of which were any more appealing than when she'd first thought of them. Maybe she was younger she would've been completely enamored by the thought of standing on a stage and showing her pokémon's talent off, dancing with them and creating combinations of moves to make the air around them sparkle in a way that she normally saw in cartoons. And maybe at another point in time, she might've even been fascinated by pokémon battling. She might have been at one point.

But both had died rather quick deaths. She could _see_ the appeal both held. Fame, glory for some, the admiration of even a few people. Power, and the chance to challenge what could essentially by called human legends. For some trainers, the prospect of competition was probably enough to get their mouths watering.

But she wasn't any of those people. She didn't have a single competitive bone in her body, and coordinating was really just a lot of show, skill and flash. Nothing that she was all too excited to even try to attempt. She'd leave things like that to people like her sister, with a flair for dramatics and a desire to show people something that would really "wow" them as the older girl had once put it.

' _Back at square one, up a creek, and without a paddle…'_ she stared at the sky in thought. Row really didn't have a clue as to what to do next exactly, or where to go.

Ethan, the sneaky bastard, hadn't helped by piling more onto her plate than she already had to deal with. First the pokémon egg, and now favors? Was that even legal? To pay people with pokémon for their services. She understood being thankful, but something about this felt a little criminal…

Though, to be completely fair, she also had a horrible habit of thinking too much on subjects…

' _What was I thinking about again…?'_ "I don't know," apparently it was a suitable enough response for the moment, and she could only be thankful that Gomu chose that _exact_ moment to be his usual funny little self and pop out of her bag, completely clueless to the situation.

"Well, didn't you say last night that some guy you made a bet with asked you for some favor?" It was a good attempt at guiding her, but really? She _was_ rather reluctant to do anything Ethan asked of her. The man was only becoming more and more suspicious with his rather flippant nature, seemingly on-a-whim actions, and devil-may-care-but- _I_ -sure-as-hell-don't attitude.

This very well could've been something illegal, and she was playing right into the breeder's hands…

But he _had_ known her brother, even repeated one of her father's sayings word for word… roughly. It was… doubtful that he'd risk her brother's anger, but still…

"Where did he say you were supposed to go?"

"Two packages; one to a professor that may or may not be south-east of Castelia City… And if not have fun finding the person," she paused to think for a bit, the added weight of her apparent job that she hadn't even agreed upon but had no choice but to accomplish. "The other one needs to go to… Hoenn? Or was it Johto?" Both places were rather far, and she didn't have the money for the trip, nor the means to cross an entire ocean for free. Gomu wasn't at a stage where he could learn that surfing move, and she didn't have a pokémon currently capable of aerial travel of any kind. The egg might hatch into one but it was just as liable to hatch into a magikarp for all she knew.

"Well, then let's think about this for a moment." Seer sat down on a nearby rock, motioning for her to follow as the woman's starter, Noel, nestled into the side of her leg. "So, again, what do we have right now?"

"Seven pokémon between the two of us, plus ourselves, if you don't count the egg." She started, digging through her backpack until she found the case and nestled it into her lap. She hoped if it hatched, it wouldn't be too displeased with its trainer. "Four canteens of water, a week's supply of travelling rations, five changes of clothes between the two of us, a table, a pack of poker cards, a game of backgammon, a pokédex, fifty pokéballs, thirteen Ultra Balls, and seven Great Balls. Twenty potions, ten super potions, and two max potions, plus a full restore. Thirteen full heals, an assortment of berries that one of your grass-types keeps bringing back… and two packages that need delivery. One in this region, and another in Johto."

"Anything else?" She had to think for a good five seconds before she had a response to that.

"Oh yeah, if there's a change with either 'target', Ethan's sending some kind of messenger to tell me?" It felt a little insensitive to refer to living breathing people as targets, but that's what they had to do. And she wasn't entirely sure how Ethan's messenger would know where they were, but she also wasn't entirely sure she wanted to find out.

It was probably one of those things best left sleeping or whatever the phrase was.

"Ok, so we've got enough supplies to drown a rapidash at the moment," the woman smirked at that phrase, rocking back slightly on her perch in clear amusement before continuing. "And two packages that need to be delivered… what was the deadline?"

"Four months from now, taking into consideration that we might have some difficulty finding one of the recipients…"

"Ok, so we have four months to find this traveling professor person and another dude and deliver these packages… So that's what we'll do. Four months can pass by quick after all if we're not careful, so let's get the troubling one out of the way first."

"I guess…"

"And, bonus time! Maybe you can ask this professor person for tips?" On how to make Gomu stronger without evolving him? It was a possibility, but they'd have to find the man first.

Still, it was a plan at least, something she couldn't come up with at the moment. "Well then, let's go!"

* * *

"I think… that we are very lost." They were… somewhere. There were trees, it was a forest, sometime closer to mid-afternoon and entirely too cramped a space for even just a single human to try and clamber their way haphazardly through. She only had the vaguest sense that they were headed in a direction, and even then she couldn't specifically tell which direction that was.

They'd gone straight, and far as she could tell they'd never actually made a turn at any point along the path after that, but she _knew_ almost intimately that they weren't getting anywhere even remotely close to the end of the forest…

Were they going in circles?

"Yep." Seer only seemed mildly amused about that, that increasingly familiar smirk stretching across her face and making her look all the more calm as a result. But there was an undertone of _something_ there.

Fear?

Maybe frustration? _'No, fear…'_ But of what? It couldn't be wild pokémon. Seer had stronger ones than any that could be found in the general area from what she'd seen. Noel alone could probably bat half the wild pokémon inhabiting the trees into non-existence, he seemed perfectly able and willing to do just that. But then what? "Hey, Kiddo?"

What were humans normally afraid of?

' _Bugs, ghosts, the dark, spiders, the unknown, heights, falling, people, water-'"_ Yeah?" Her father would've killed her for that response if he'd been present, her mother too, maybe…

"Are you okay?"

"Fine, why?"

"Just… a little concerned is all… what happened there?"

"Thinking." Seer smirked at that, clearly amused by that response, but at least the fear had ebbed a little.

"Well, tell your thoughts to hold it for a bit. We've got to get out of this forest before dark."

Got to, not should, not maybe probably, got to. _'Before dark?'_ Oh.

"Okay." And she stood, shifting one of the straps of her backpack just the slightest bit that it settled properly against her back again, before brushing whatever dirt and grime might've collected on her pants, and sliding between two rather closely grown trees. Seer wasn't far behind, her starter even less so, and they went back to being rather terribly lost…

* * *

"Miss Seer! I think I found the road!" she called kicking a pebble off to the side as she waited for said woman to catch up.

She was getting progressively more irritable the more time they spent in these Arceus-forsaken woods. Her feet hurt, legs aches, her ankles weren't too fond of her right now, she'd gotten bitten twice by flies, and then one of those vivillon pokémon had swooped down and almost took her head off. Or rather, had nearly taken one of the pins in her hair out. Pretty as they were, she hadn't been too fond of that…

"Finally!" the woman commented as she came out of the bushes, eyeballing the road for a sec before trying to figure out which way to go. They'd gotten turned around pretty badly for a bit, but they still had daylight to spare. They'd either wind up backpedaling all the way to Castelia, or finally make it past these damned woods and get to the next town. "Where is your map anyways?"

"Give me a sec…" she swung her pack around, digging through the pockets before finally finding what she was looking for. Pulling out her poképad and swiping across the screen for a bit before finally finding what she was looking for.

"That's some pretty heavy tech there… Where'd you get it?"

"Somewhere…" she mumbled, tilting her head for a moment before looking down towards the road and back again.

"And where is that?" Seer pressed, arms crossed as she watched her fiddle with the device. Pokepads weren't rare, but _were_ expensive technology. Built to last when traveling, since it'd been originally designed for trainers, but usually was more commonly found in the possession of spoiled rich kids. Hers was rather basic though, not old, but not nearly so frivolously designed as the ones she'd seen on the kids who'd come into the game centers. Seer had a few too, but they weren't something the average kid from a middle-class family came by so easily sometimes.

The people who made it, Silph Co., still hadn't found a way to make it cost less to make and program, so it was still something difficult to acquire.

"Here and there." She was being purposefully vague, and they both knew it. But that wouldn't make her stop giving round-about answers… "We go that way… I think." She said, changing the subject as she pointed to the right, double checking the screen before walking.

"Lead the way Little Missy." Seer consented, "Nacrene City awaits."

* * *

' _Nacrene City smells like trees and water…'_ She would admit that that might be a strange thing to think of, but covered up to her knees in muck and mud smeared across one cheek, she couldn't say much else on the subject. Her limbs felt heavy, and she probably looked about as tired as she felt physically.

She was beginning to vaguely recall the reasons as to why exactly she hated the outdoors so much. _'But,'_ she huffed, shuffling into the pokémon center with an absolutely exhausted looking Seer not far behind, _'this was fun. I've decided that this was fun, and I'm going to stick to it.'_ Shitty luck was par the course really. Nothing was ever smooth sailing, otherwise she wouldn't be _here_. So their little adventure in the forest had been fun, and she wasn't going to change that even just a little bit.

Fuck a sour mood, she was hungry and tired, and a bath and a bed had never sounded so sweet.

"Tomorrow… let's _never_ do that again…"

"We might have to."

"Shit."

"Goo!"

"Gomu had fun."

"Gomu is a pokémon…"

"So's Noel."

"…True… I'm sorry, just…"

"Irritable?"

"Yeah."

"Night."

"G'night." They weren't outside, in the forest, where it was dark, so she decided that that was a good thing too. She didn't want to see what would happen if they'd been outside and still lost when it got dark. Didn't want to think about it either. "A shower sounds wonderful…"

* * *

A/N. Short chapter is short, and I'm sorry for the wait! But hey! I updated finally.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and thanks for reading! Please leave a review and see ya!


	6. Of Explosions Pt 1

**Disclaimer: I own nothing!**

* * *

 **EP 06: Of Explosions Pt 1**

* * *

Row was pissed –no, not pissed, absolutely _fucking_ _ **livid**_ – spitting soot and something that tasted distinctly burnt out of her mouth even as her expression twisted into something wholly unwelcoming and volatile in nature. Behind her, Seer's starter sniffed and _pouted –'Grass-types can_ _ **pout**_ _?!'_ but there was little she could do without said pokémon trainer being present. It was _her_ pokémon after all, and she didn't know Noel nearly as well as Seer did.

Where even _was_ Seer for that matter.

They'd arrived in… she'd forgotten the name of the city already, but it had a gym in it that was set into the bottom of the museum and the woman in charge of the whole place had been almost patronizing in her attempts to help. Nevermind that in hindsight, she probably should've held her tongue for once in her life and taken what assistance she could. At the moment, all she had was her own inexperienced starter and an unhelpful grass-type that was in the midst of throwing one of the largest temper tantrums she'd ever had to deal with personally.

"Glasses, I understand losing my glasses, they're tiny, easy to miss, very easy to blend into the floor, toys slightly less probable, but yeah, still totally doable…" she probably sounded like she was losing her mind, she certainly _felt_ like it, but she was angry, and rationality could take a flying leap off the top of Mt. Coronet for all she could find it in herself to care. "But how the _fuck_ did I lose an entire adult?!" She tried to think on that, but all it got her was a sudden increase in blood pressure, a killer headache, and if she didn't know better, she would swear she was beginning to see red.

She felt like she was in a store with her mother again, taking her eyes off of a person for more than five seconds and immediately losing them to the general chaos of the average shopping district. Only instead of a shopping district, it was a city, and instead of her mother, it was the woman who'd decided that they were "friends" in what was probably the most tentative and loosest way possible. _'Seer is nice, but_ _ **this**_ _is a fucking pain in my ass and a half!'_

Where had everything gone wrong?

An explosion, or something _vaguely_ similar; all hell-fire and brimstone sounds, screaming people, and earth shaking so suddenly she'd all but almost killed herself between standing and suddenly finding herself sprawled out on the ground.

The world was _still_ spinning slightly, and she could still hear the faint ringing in her ears from the initial cacophony that had interrupted what would've been a peaceful afternoon. And she'd lost Seer in the chaos, and by some stroke of either brilliant luck or shitty coincidence, wound up with the woman's – _'Teenager?'_ Whatever, she had her sceptile and she had no clue what she was going to do with the beast, because it sure wasn't listening to her.

"Sceptile…"

"You know, we'd find your trainer a lot faster if you… I don't know… _helped_?" she didn't mean to snap at the poor thing, or to sound so bitingly sarcastic, but between its own reluctance and the fact that the whole entire lot of them were lost in a _town_ of all things, well…

Life had certainly been running a whole lot smoother in the past.

"Scept!" Noel snapped back at her, and whatever part of her that had wanted to apologize died a rather pathetic death as she returned the snappish response with her own special expression of some amount of mixed, very angry emotions.

She sighed, dropping her head when her headache singed up to remind her why that probably wasn't such a good idea.

"Fuck my life…"

"Goo?"

* * *

"I _have_ to find them!"

"Ma'am, we're doing the best we possibly can, but this won't go any faster with you yelling at us."

"Arceus-damnit, don't you realize that not only is my pokémon still out there with those crazy people, there is also a little _girl_!"

"Ma'am…"

"You're all fucking _useless_!" Seer stormed off, a whole litany of swears streaming from her lips and leaving a heavily stressed out officer in her wake. She didn't snap, she wasn't _supposed_ to get angry, she was the _adult_. She was supposed to be cool and calm, the voice of reason when chaos started sinking its fingers into an already bad situation.

She was _responsible_.

She was supposed to know better than to lose her head like that. But she had. Noel was out there somewhere, hopefully with little Row, and Arceus help the bastards that had gotten them all separated if they weren't together and that little girl got hurt. She might've only just met the kid, but a child was a child, and to get them involved in such a violent affair wasn't _right_.

Strange people with questionable fashion tastes and definitely bad intentions aside. _'I will_ _ **hang**_ _them all if anything happens to either Noel or Row!'_ "Damnit!"

"Hey, what's going on?" The voice… was deep, well passed puberty but not nearly deep enough to warrant the belief that this was someone older than at most, thirty.

Had to be at least in his mid-twenties, and aside from the frankly _jarring_ scar running along the young man's face, she could tell she'd been spot on. Blue eyes like a summer sky met her own, set into a face with a coloration that could only come from either working in the sun too long like a farmer or spending _way_ too much time at the beach. His arms were just as scarred from what she could see of them; black leather jacket rolled up to the elbows and face glaring her down like _she'd_ been the cause of the earlier panic.

He looked… _good_ , completely disregarding the more apparent and nastier wounds littering what she could see of him, and he certainly knew how to dress, if a little plainly and practically. She could already tell he was one of those super-serious types though, and she rarely got along well with them. Their expressions had a tendency to not move at all, and she just couldn't keep a straight face when put up against _that_. Probably a career pokémon trainer, in that "I travel across the world _just_ to battle gyms until all my dreams are of battling big bad pokémon." –way. At his side was some strange girl, naïve looking and relatively young, clinging to his arm and watching her with a hawk's eye and some impressive amount of distrust.

"Uh…"

"Is everything okay? You were causing quite the ruckus just a bit ago…" The man folded his arms across his chest; lean and very much on the more physically fit side of things, and shifted his wait so his right cocked slightly. "Those… people, from earlier made quite a mess in front of Lenora's gym. A lot of people got caught up in it, and she's not too happy from what I hear." The stranger hesitated for a moment, as if there was something _else_ he'd wanted to use as a descriptor for their resident arsonists, but had gone for the more polite route instead.

The girl frowned, and for a split second she had to question her own already questionable sanity. _'Wait… wasn't she blonde last time I looked?'_ Her hair was suddenly very brown, or maybe it had just looked blonde in the lighting of room. She wasn't sure, but she was very much certain that it would be better not to question a sudden change in hair color.

"I… I guess?" She wasn't, but the chances of this guy actually helping were slim to none, and she'd never been one to get her hopes up.

"You guess? It didn't sound like it earlier." Well, if he was going to be like _that._

"If you're not going to believe when I say I'm fine, why ask in the first place?" she rested her hands on her hips, cocking them off to the side and openly challenging the man now. "For that matter, why are you even talking to me?"

"Because I like to think I'm a better person than to just walk away when someone's clearly in trouble, and my mother raised me better than _that_." He frowned at the challenge, something in his eyes flashing. She had probably ignited that old spark all trainers had, but he clearly had more control than the less experienced ones you typically found in Nacrene. Most would've snapped almost immediately at the subtle body language.

' _He has experience, good? Or not?'_ She sucked her teeth, thinking for a split second before shifting her weight again. "Well, for someone with such _good manners_ , we certainly don't exercise them very often do we? Come up to me demanding answers, and you don't even give me a name!"

"Ray… You?"

"People call me Seer, make of that what you will." She nodded, gave the entire, crowded lobby of the pokémon center a once over, before motioning for the man to follow her.

She sat down, leg swinging over the other until they crossed comfortably at the knee, and she resumed observing the man. The girl had changed hair colors again. "I'm not one to… pry. But whatever your little girlfriend is, or isn't, you should probably remind her to pick a hair color and stick with it. Changing it every time someone looks her way is sure to catch attention, unwanted or not." If she was going to do such noticeable colors at _pink_ , she should probably not do so every five seconds.

The girl hissed at her, something didn't sound the least bit human at all, but finally settled on a nice, subtle black roughly the same shade of the man's.

"Thanks for the warning," he acquiesced, lifting a hand and resting it on the head of the younger _looking_ girl. "This is… Eva, and I appreciate you not asking much more than that." The girl waved amicably enough at that, despite her clear distrust. "Now your… ah-problem?"

And she sighed, face screwing up into something that caused the strange girl to coo at her. Did she _look_ as in pain as she was feeling? Doubtful, but still, she was worried and she was becoming increasingly poor at hiding it.

"I was… _am_ traveling, on vacation really. Extended or not isn't completely decided yet, but that's neither here nor there. What _is_ , is that in a very brief amount of time, I made a friend."

"A friend?"

"Rookie pokémon trainer, just starting out. Her name's Row, and a _lot_ smaller than she looks really. She's got noticeably green hair, but aside from that… probably the most notable feature is her starter."

"And that's got you worried?"

"More than worried, she's twelve years old, doesn't know what the fuck she's doing, and is currently out there somewhere with those crazy people along with, potentially, _hopefully_ my own starter."

"You said she was a rookie trainer though…" He paid attention, she'd give him that much.

"Yeah, with a goomy that has little to no experience in battle and a pokémon egg as her only defense if anyone attacks her and my sceptile, Noel, isn't with her."

She waited, and watched as Ray's expression changed gradually from its near work-ethic seriousness to something wholly unsettling. _'Anger?'_ He couldn't be mad at Row, he didn't even know the kid, of that much she was certain. So at the people that had attacked?

"… This is gonna sound strange, but what is this kid's general disposition like?"

"Disposition?" An unusual question…

"Her temperament, what's her personality. Is she a happy person? Lazy, sad, what's she like emotionally?" That… was head to describe. She'd only just met Row, and the kid's moods were rather mercurial that it was almost impossible to tell what exactly was her normal state of being. Was she usually sad? Usually happy?

"I… can't exactly describe that, mostly because I don't know how to. She smiles, a lot, but it doesn't always reach her eyes I think." He nodded understandingly and turned to the odd girl now watching the entire crowd as if she was waiting for something to come over and stick their noses into their business.

"Think you can track that Eva?" The girl nodded, eagerly and practically _skipped_ her way out of the pokémon center with Ray right on her tail. _'Beginning to think that she is human less and less…'_

She sighed, and followed the two out.

"You should stay in the center."

"Should stay, won't. Row doesn't know you two, and after _that,_ " she paused pointing to the still smoking crater that had been the street leading to the Nacrene City gym. Magically, the building itself was still in one piece, completely unharmed and almost mocking the attempts of the people who had made the attempt. "I'm not sure how easily she'll trust you two, who are complete strangers. No offense, but even if I just met the kid, I still know her better than you."

"Fine, but I'm not holding your hand if we get into a fight." And she barked a laugh, something sharp that had the man almost recoiling despite being several years her senior. _'Good.'_

"I was the manager and main battler at Mossdeep Game Center. No _criminal_ or street thug wannabe is gonna get in _my_ way. Besides, I'm also missing my starter, and Noel won't listen to anyone but me." She said, and gently shoved her way passed the man just to further emphasize her point.

"Women…"

"I heard that."

* * *

Bad went to worse, or worse went to even _more_ worse if that was even possible. _'Is that possible?'_ She hissed, ducking as the same people that had tried to blow up the gym stomped passed in droves, varyingly angry expressions on their faces and muttering not too subtly practically on _top_ of her. _'Shit, shit,_ _ **shit!**_ _'_

"Arceus, I wasn't expecting Lenora to be that powerful! She was such a pushover years ago!"

"Pushover? Or just too used to playing with kiddies."

"What?"

"She's a _gym_ leader, idiot! They are a whole hell of a lot stronger than most people give some of them credit for. They're not all just barely above a rookie's level. They only use those pokémon to give the brat trainers a fair fight."

"What?! Really?"

"Oh by Mew… Are all of you idiots?!"

"Sorry?"

"I'm surrounded by morons…" It took everything she had to not blow her cover by laughing, and she sighed when the last of the group was gone.

"Gomu, Noel, that was _way_ too close."

"Goo!"

"Scept…"

"Oh come on! We'll find Seer soon, I'm certain. Chin up." She tried, long since giving up on holding whatever grudge she'd had half a mind to start up in the first place.

"Scept-!"

"Ah!"

"Well, look-at-what we have here..." _'Shit!'_

"Looks like a little spy, hey boys?"

"Scept!"

"Goo-goo!"

"And look at these pokémon! Wasted on an ungrateful brat like you, I bet!" _'Seer, where are you?!"_

"AAAHHH!"

* * *

A/N. New chapter that's really short, I'm sorry I'll make the next one longer I promise! Please leave a review and tell me what you think, hope you enjoyed the chapter and bye!


	7. Of Explosions Pt 2

**Disclaimer: Hopefully longer chapter is not mine! Ray belongs to Siphon 117**

* * *

 **EP 07: Of Explosions Pt 2**

* * *

" _AAAAHHH!"_

It hadn't taken long for Seer to recognize the scream. For all of the few days she'd known the child, it was unmistakably Row's voice, and that was not good. She didn't know if Row had any training in self-defense, or if she really _was_ as completely harmless as she _looked_ , but in either case the child clearly needed help.

' _Bad nights, bloody knuckles, scraped knees… black eye…'_ She swallowed what was possibly bile and pushed what she would of the worst of it down. Now was not the time to be getting lost in bad memories and unpleasant past regrets. She wasn't a child anymore, she was a pokémon trainer, and she could protect herself. There was nothing for her to be afraid of anymore, but _Row_ wasn't an adult yet.

Row was a child, a kid, a brat. There were, ideally, no demons for her to face and certainly nothing that should've sent the child crying for cover unless it was the dark or something equally trivial. Row didn't have to deal with the same traumas she had, and she wasn't going to let that change.

She ran, leaving Ray as his… girlfriend, to catch up, darting between buildings and across streets, taking shortcuts where she felt comfortable and staying to the beaten path when she couldn't.

"Seer, hold up!"

"No, you catch up!" She called back without hesitation, that same smirk flitting across her face as she eased herself into that same calm aloofness that had won her several battles at the Game Center.

Ray and Eva _would_ catch up, eventually she was certain at the very least, but right now Row and Noel were more important than being a little more courteous to the people helping her, she wasn't going to lose either to the machinations of a bunch of crazy arsonists if she could help it.

* * *

"Shit fucking fantastic." Row hissed, blinking at the metal ceiling and scowling something fierce at the feel of cold metal at her back. The room was dark, a little on the too big side, and was clearly meant to hold big pokémon and not little human girls who constituted for about as much of a threat as the morning dew on grass. Pins and needles played strange games up her right arm, and both hands were tied maybe a little _too_ tightly behind her back, but her feet were free so if she absolutely wanted or had to, she could walk if she could just get herself up long enough without falling over.

Still, she'd been in far better spots before, and not trapped in a giant metal death box for an indeterminable amount of time. _'What happened?'_ She sighed, trying to remember and only succeeding in worsening the stinging headache at the side of her head – _'Oh yeah, I was stupid.'_

She grimaced, remembering her little _episode;_ how she'd bitten one of the men that had found her and Noel, the fierce and explosive battle that had erupted shortly after, and how she'd cussed up a right storm before nearly taking a chunk out of one her captor's arms and spitting the blood back into his face when she'd failed that. How someone had hit her upside the head with something dense and of a moderate size before she'd blacked out to pain shooting up the side of her skull. _'And what exactly_ _ **were**_ _you expecting to happen, silly little girl._ _ **Stupid**_ _little girl. You don't have your sister, your brother, or your father's bite, you have no_ _ **fangs**_ _!'_ She frowned, watching the wall and counting the lines she could just barely make out as her vision adjusted. _'Silly,_ _ **pathetic**_ _, weak little girl._ _All you have is a too big heart and your tears, and what good have those ever done you?'_ "Shut up…"

" _Pi-chu?"_

* * *

She blinked, staring at the blood on the ground with ice in her veins and some part of her screaming that she had failed. She shot it in cold blood and pretended that it was dressed just like the men and women that had tried to bomb the Nacrene City Gym.

It didn't matter how violent her thoughts got though, she couldn't let it show. She had to remain calm, though the disquiet of the war-torn, now empty battlefield left her more than a little disturbed. Belatedly, she wondered if her expression would cause concern in her two little helpers should they catch sight of it.

' _Row might be dead, and it's_ _ **your**_ _fault for letting her out of your sight!'_ She was _very_ good at hiding things, though maybe not as good as she had originally thought if the look the Eva girl was giving her was anything to go by. "Mind your business, and look for clues." She ordered, tone clip and strangely gentle despite the violence she could feel brewing inside. The girl recoiled at her tone, and the man, Ray, shot her a scathing look, only slightly lessened by the pitying look that curdled the expression the instant his eyes landed on the blood she'd been staring at not even five seconds prior.

She didn't _need_ his pity though, she needed to find Row, or whatever was left of the child. "Noel!" she barked aloud, and really the two should stop being so jumpy. They were almost as suspicious as the group of criminals they were currently evading. Her grass-type appeared quickly enough, punctual as always when called during serious situations, he looked equal parts guilty and apologetic, but she let it slide. He'd probably fought very hard if the gashes in the ground where anything to go by. Keeping an eye on Row during the chaos of a pokémon battle would've been next to impossible.

"Seer…"Ray was wary of her now, but she'd already told him she knew how to battle. Clearly, he hadn't believed her when she'd pointed it out as they left the safety of the pokémon center. She wasn't sorry, and it was his own fault for underestimating her.

"What do you think these mean?" she questioned, cutting off whatever warning he may or may not have been about to give her, hands shoved into her pockets and kicking slightly at the dirt near several very large, unmistakable scorch marks. _'Flamethrower maybe?'_

Ray knelt down to get a closer look, picking at the dirt with his fingers and rubbing soot and ash between the thumb and pointer.

"Fire-type," he started plainly with the painfully obvious. "Flamethrower, or maybe just an Ember from a very powerful fire-type pokémon…" Not likely, Ember was a beginner's move, from young fire-type without a lot of power at first. Weak, and even a legendary would have trouble making that move threatening for a pokémon with enough experience. Like an electric-types Thundershock or a water-types Water Gun attack. Weak, and not an immediate threat to a pokémon that's been trained for near years now. "Definitely not a Fire Blast. Doesn't have the scorch patterns that come with the move hitting something."

"Noel, was it?" she turned to her grass-type, who was holding onto her companion's backpack, her own starter just as missing as the girl. _'Did they get Gomu too?'_

"What the-?!" She turned to see what Ray was hollering about, only to sigh in relief at the familiar sight of a purple blob spread across the man's boot and sliming it up to kingdom come. "A goomy? What's one doing in Unova? That's a Kalos dragon-type!" He questioned, looking just about as confused as she'd probably expected him to. She grinned, easily amused at his apparent confusion, before walking up and collecting the young pokémon from the ground.

" _That_ is Gomu." She answered easily, tucking the small pokémon into one arm and frowning slightly at the sight that met her eyes. It was sad, clearly, missing its trainer and probably feeling like it had failed. _'No body, so she should still be alive?'_

"Gomu?"

"Row named him that, don't ask me."

"The rookie trainer?"

"Gomu's her starter, and she absolutely adores the little creature." She explained, pulling out its pokéball and returning it for the moment. It would only get in the way, and as tiny as it was, it'd be far too easy to lose it in the forest. Row wouldn't forgive her if she lost her starter.

"Strange child."

"So's Eva." She shot back, smirking at the odd girl and disappearing into the tree line with Row's bag slung over her shoulder and Noel right at her heels.

* * *

' _This is getting… complicated…'_ Ray rolled his shoulders, discomfort creeping up the more time he spent with the honestly strange woman he'd come across at the pokémon center. She wasn't _bad_ per say, in that Eva seemed to at least tolerate her presence, so she could at the very least be trusted on _that_ front. She'd certainly won herself points when she'd opted to not ask about the "girl" and instead ignored whatever eccentricities she continued to show by pointing out that she really needed to stop changing her hair color every opportunity.

But still, there was something off about the woman. She was far too good at masking her emotions, and it was next to impossible to get a read on her, always smirking when most would frown or cry, calm when most would snap with anger, and even when it seeped into the tone of her voice, it never showed on her face. It mostly by principle, but it was one that had kept him out of far stickier situations that kept him from trusting her fully. She had too good of a poker face, and people poker faces had secrets that usually got others and themselves killed or in a lot of danger.

" _Ray?"_ He sighed, giving his best smile before placing a gentle hand on Eva's head, her hair flickering through several colors and almost fading into red before settling back into the same shade his own hair was. She needed to work on that, but for now it held up where it should.

She smiled at him, eyes still concerned before almost tripping over a root and wildly flailing. He caught her before the shock could ruin her disguise, and she clung onto his arm even after she regained her balance. He wasn't mad, he couldn't be mad at her, like he couldn't be mad at the rest of his team. He couldn't really be mad at Seer, but the woman was making it more and more difficult to be understanding, and he'd never been good around people anyways.

"Seer, we've been walking for a while… Do you even know where we're going?" He called to the woman still marching on ahead. She looked back at him, a single, delicate eyebrow quirked in a way that stated rather plainly the two were taking way too long to catch up with her. _'Does she even know what's ahead for us potentially, or does she just plain not give a shit?'_ He wondered, watching her lips pull tight and that same, slowly infuriating smirk spread across her face.

" _I_ don't, but Noel does. Now hurry up, you walk too slow as it is, Pokey." She snarked back at him, hands resting against her hips and waiting ever so patiently for the both of them to finally catch up.

"We need a plan of some kind…"

"Why?" Why? Because one child was not going to be saved by rushing headlong into danger and getting themselves killed or captured. Because this kid would probably like it a lot better if the people who were trying to save her didn't get themselves put into a hospital for it.

Because _no one_ was getting rescued if they themselves wound up needing it.

"Do you even know what we're up against?"

"A bunch of assholes with a penchant for explosives and no fashion sense?" she offered up idly, a sarcastic bite to her tone that hadn't been there previously. He scowled at it, realizing that while she might be taking this seriously, she was not taking it seriously _enough_. And that could get them all killed.

"This is a criminal organization, _Seer_. Team Plasma, heard of them?" he questioned, speeding up just enough to outpace the woman and stand in front of her. She gave him a rather scathing glare in return for his efforts, but this was needed. Seer was going to get them all killed if he didn't put a stop to her now. "They tried to _liberate_ pokémon two years ago, and now they're back, meaner and not lead by an _idiot_!" he ground out, remembering the stories about the man that was supposed to be the "king" of the group having vanished during the incident that had led to his and his followers defeat, and the supposed disbanding.

Or in an idea world at the very least. No, instead the police had failed to detain the "true" leader of the group and had released half on the pretense of changed views and good behavior. The whole organization was split into two factions, with one that still sided with their beloved king and the other following the still loose sage, Ghetsis.

And Ghetsis, if rumors were to be believed, was insane.

There was no telling what the radicals that had joined him after the split were like. The very fact that there was a chance of her friend being alive was a miracle in and of itself, when the group as a whole were becoming more and more violent by the day.

For a moment, Seer didn't say a word, and he almost dared to think she had actually listened to him, but then woman snorted something very inelegant and shoved right past him.

"Yeah, yeah, Psycho Dude number 56 with plans to rule the world with the power of a god and his little cronies still currently have my kid, doesn't change what I have to do, does it?" he found himself stunned at her blatant disregard. He sighed, realizing that there was no getting through to her trudged along behind her.

' _Why I don't like humans…'_

" _Ray…"_

* * *

"Pi-pi-pi…" she thanked whatever lucky stars were smiling down on her as the little electric-type gnawed through the rope binding her wrists, the fibers snapping apart audibly and allowing her to finally rub the aches out of her limbs and check whatever head wound had been bothering her for past-however long they'd been in the container,

"Thank you!" she whispered, petting the mouse on the head and giggling as it preened under the praise, looking very pleased with itself at already putting a whole in one of the bad men's plans. She grinned and waited just long enough for it to clamber onto her shoulder before making her way over to the lock on the far end of their prison. _'Electronic… four digit code, and an alarm for when I get it wrong.'_ She noted with a drying sense of humor, chuckling in a way that sounded far too bitter before taking a step back.

She had the pichu that had by some lucky coincidence wound up in the cage with her, but would it be enough to break the lock without leaving them both permanently trapped or alerting the guards? _'Worth a shot.'_ She shrugged, and motioned for the creature to listen. "Do you know any electric-type moves?" She asked, noting the tuft of hair on its little head and the way it tucked itself into the crook of her neck when she let it.

It blinked at her, a bit confused, before turning its gaze to the lock in question, and smirked something nasty that she felt honestly proud of.

"Pi!" She mimicked the possibly devilish expression, and allowing the little mouse to hop down off of her shoulder, took a step back.

Far too pleased with herself, and maybe a little in over her head, her smirk twisted into something very sadistic in nature and she all but purred as a surprisingly powerful arc of electricity shot up and fried the lock. "Knock, knock!"

It blew into bits and pieces.

* * *

Surprisingly, for a group that had been disbanded in the last two or so years, they'd certainly forgotten the meaning of subtlety, a whole substitute _base_ built in what had to have been no more than four days; a number of what looked like transportation trucks parked in perfect single file rows, and various guard patrols making rounds. Seer would give credit it was due at the very least. They knew what they were doing, and were _far_ more organized than a group like them should've been after losing half their force and suffering such a defeat.

"They were after something," Ray noted behind her, and she found herself frowning in agreement. This had been no off-chance case of pure coincidence. These people had come here looking for something, and had either come across more than a few bumps in the road, or hadn't found it at all. "Wonder what?"

"Don't care, they've got my kid."

"Hold up! Seer, don't you think we ought to stop whatever they're planning?" She looked at Ray, really looked at him, and then scoffed as she knelt down to his level.

"Ray, I didn't come here to play hero. That would be and is completely stupid." He actually looked affronted at that, but she didn't give him time to make a comeback, "I came here to get Row, and potentially my pokémon if they had both. I've got Noel, I just need Row. They can do whatever they fuck they want after I get her back. It's not my place to stop crazy people. I'll leave that to the people whose _job_ it is to do that."

"So you're just gonna let them get away with it?" She stopped dead in her tracks, blood running like ice for a moment before turned what had to be the most scathing glare he'd ever experienced, if the way he flinched from her was anything to go by.

"My first priority, is and always has been Row's safety since this whole mess started. I don't give a shit what they do otherwise."

"Seer-!" she slapped a hand over his mouth without hesitation, her amused smirk gone in favor of pessimistic realism. They weren't heroes, and she wasn't about to die trying to stop crazy people when all she had come to do was rescue one little girl. She loved pokémon, yes, always would, but to do anything more when a child's life was on the line was to have your priorities skewed in the worst ways possible.

"If Row is hurt, than I have to get her to a hospital depending on the severity, and if she isn't hurt at all, then I have to get her out of here before she _does_ get hurt. In nowhere in that plan, is there room for idiotic heroics and _vigilante_ wannabes. You can have your hero fantasies later when you're asleep in bed, leave these asswipes to the gym leaders, the police, and anyone else who might know how to handle these assholes. Your one trainer, and if you choose to stay and fight, I'm sorry you're on your own." She hissed, daring him with her eyes to challenge what she just said. He wisely kept his mouth shut. "Now let's go." And she stormed off, leaving a rather furious Ray in her wake and a very worried Eva.

If he followed or if he didn't, she didn't bother to check. She and Noel could sneak better without having to account for two additional bodies.

"I hate you."

"Maybe, but you volunteered to help. You could leave now, and I wouldn't give two shits." She commented idly, sneaking around a corner and passed an unsuspecting guard. "You needed a reality check, Mr. Hero." She commented idly, though she doubted he'd seen reality at all. He probably still thought she was wrong and that they should go out of their way to stop these men, and maybe they should, but with Row's state of being an unclear factor and the sheer fact that there were only two of them against twenty or so of them, well, she wasn't fond of those odds at all.

And if he had a problem with that then fine, he could go off on his own. She was only here to find Row and leave.

" _Miss Seer?"_ And her heart practically stopped as she almost walked right over the child in question, green hair a sight for sore eyes and heart fluttering in some strange combination of relief and shock.

The child seemed to be mimicking her emotions quite accurately too if body language was anything to go by, and suddenly she was being hugged by the little brat.

"Brat! Where the fuck were you?" she whispered, watching as the child pulled back awkwardly and shuffled about for a few seconds before being pulled behind a nearby crate as several men stomped by, large and very mean looking pokémon at their side.

"Town, the forest, here." Sarcastic little bitch, she actually missed her.

"Are you okay?"

"I _might_ have a head wound… it hurts, but its bearable." She replied and tilted her head when Seer made to check the damage. It wasn't bad, but like all head wounds there was a lot of blood caked into the poor girl's hair and dried along the side of her head. It _looked_ like someone had tried to knock her out with a rock, but either they had realized that that was dangerous and held back or were just terrible at aiming even their own arm, because while the blow had certainly knocked her out, it had only left a small nick on the side of her head.

Better safe than sorry still though, and she almost mentioned as much until the younger trainer cut her off, eyes shining with excitement, and introduced her new friend that she'd made while being held hostage. "Oh, and this is Pachi." Seer wasn't quite sure what to think about that. First Gomu, now Pachi? The girl certainly _had_ an interesting way of naming things.

"Pachi the Pichu?"

"Pachi the Pichu." And she huffed a laugh before ruffling the girl's hair and pulling her along.

"Good, now let's get out of here." She said, and herded the girl back towards the treeline. Ray stopped them both though.

"Hold up, what if they come looking for her?"

"Well I certainly don't plan on being still around when they find her gone." Seer mentioned idly, her signature back in place even as she glared the man down from suggesting anything even remotely reckless. "Which is why we're headed back to town."

"And?"

"And what? You want me to come running back out here? Nuh-uh." She shook her head, noting the growing scowl and rolling her eyes at the sight, before laughing slightly at the overall, finished expression. "I _said_ that you could do what you please. I have m-I have Row now. If you want to go play hero and get yourself killed then do so. I'm not going to stop you." She noted how Row frowned at the exchange, eying the man with a strange look in her eyes before they both turned and almost vanished into the trees.

"Hey, Mister?" Row called, turning to give the man another, cursory once over before meeting him square in the eyes, backpack reclaimed and _Pachi_ tucked into her shoulder.

"What?" Row opened her mouth, about to say _something_ , but it died, eyes catching sight of something that made the child freeze for a few seconds before she darted into the trees, mouth snapping shut with an audible click, and Seer not far behind.

"See ya, Mr. Hero."

* * *

A/N. And with that, Ray leaves the picture for a bit, but don't worry he'll be back! And Seer will probably have a lot more mocking nicknames for the poor guy. Also meet Pachi the Pichu, Row's inmate, friend, and now prankster conspirator! I hope you all enjoyed the chapter and thanks for reading! Please leave a review and tell me what you think see ya!


	8. The Taste of Defeat

**Disclaimer: I own nothing!**

* * *

 **EP 07.5: The Taste of Defeat...**

* * *

Ray wasn't normally of a mindset to complain. At least, not _too_ much. It wasn't entirely uncommon for him to run into people who didn't always agree with his way of thinking, they were a dime a dozen, and there was always at least one person who frowned when they noticed his determination on the matter and just how he wouldn't budge.

But something about what the woman, Seer, had said bothered him.

" _I didn't come here to play hero…"_

He wasn't _playing_ hero, these people were dangerous. They were crazy, radicals with a penchant for explosives and they were _evil_. He couldn't just let that slide.

" _In nowhere in that plan is there room for idiotic heroics and vigilante wannabes…"_

Yeah, so they'd kidnapped some random child for no apparent reason. He knew it'd be stupid to stick around with the kid when the bad guys would be looking for them. They were _evidence_ , a witness, something that couldn't just be _allowed_ to go free. But that didn't mean they couldn't deal with the problem after making sure the kid was safe.

" _Ray?"_

"Eva, do me a favor and use Dragon Breathe. Keep 'em at a distance, but don't let any of 'em escape." Brown hair bobbed out of the corner of his eye, and there was a brilliant flash of light before familiar red and white feathers he hadn't seen in months flew past him, the whole of the area going up in strange blue and yellow flames.

There were a few shouts of surprise, someone making a comment along the lines of dragons and legendary pokémon and where exactly one had come from, before something a little more important snatched their combined attentions up. He shoved his own hands into the large pockets running along the length of his pants, glancing at shaded figures and dancing shadows before leaping from the top of the crate he'd been perched on for the better part of thirty minutes.

"What the f-?!" There was a rather satisfying _crack_ as his arm lashed out, the familiar sensation of bone giving under the force of a well-placed punch. He watched idly as the figure crumpled to the ground like a puppet without strings before turning to the remaining grunts.

"Who's the leader of this little operation?" he questioned, watching as several squirmed in obvious discomfort before someone had the brains or balls to actually send a pokémon out at him.

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know?" said criminal called out snidely, and he watched the angry pokémon snarl and practically foam at the mouth. _'I'm not playing hero, but someone needs to stop these people…'_ He didn't want to even think of what exactly it'd been put through to get it to be _that_ violent. "Flamethrower!"

"Blue?" He questioned aloud, and his vision was obscured completely by the girth of his starter pokémon. She roared as the fire died down, the enemy pokémon growling back though it clearly knew what little chance it stood against the stronger fire-type. "Good girl. Now, my question?"

"N-No leader…" Someone whimpered, clearly frightened. He pinned them with a glare instantly; some mousy looking woman with blonde hair and blue eyes who couldn't meet his own to save her own life. _'Shy'_ his mind supplied helpfully, but he couldn't find it in himself to care for the faults of a crook.

"For such a huge mission, I highly doubt that. Too many things can go wrong after all…" He took note of the solid _thunk_ noise that echoed over the hiss of burning fire, the pokémon from earlier having gotten either a little too antsy or something, because it was now being pinned by his starter. "Fiery Blue, care to take a guess?"

She snorted smoke in response, black clouds puffing out from her nose and barked at the one who'd had the audacity to attack her trainer.

"You think it's that one? Well?" he turned back to the woman and she went skittish at the prospect.

"I… I…" she didn't get to finish though, mouth snapping shut with an audible click as the ballsy trainer snapped.

"Sammy, shut _up!"_

"B-But…"

"You heard him, Sam." _That_ voice was unfamiliar, new, and something in it made every instinct he had in him snatch at it. _'_ _ **That's**_ _the leader_ _ **…'**_

"And here I was told you didn't exist." His eyes picked out the figure easily enough, standing amidst the worst of Eva's attack and looking almost at _home_ in the thick of it. Even with fire light and shadows playing across tan features, the man still looked oddly friendly. Not at all like some of the other grunts surrounding him on all sides.

"Ah, Leader…"

"All of you get out of here, I'll deal with this guy."

"But!"

"Now." And _there_ was the leader. All confidence, with kind of voice few could find within themselves to question. They scattered quickly enough, Eva oddly passive, and he worried for a split second until he saw her form dart after the fleeing group.

She was cut short though as _something_ big barreled into her, sending her back into the little clearing she'd made to gather the agents still lurking in the area. He immediately bent to check on her.

"You okay?"

" _Sorry, Ray. I tried…"_

" _I know, it's okay. We got bigger fish to fry anyways. We'll hunt them down later."_ He didn't like just letting a bunch of crooks go like that, but if he could just subdue the leader and his pokémon, than the rest of them would be relatively easy pickings. Eva was _fast_ after all. None of them could outrun her.

"You're pretty good, I'll give you _that_. It's impressive really. I don't think I've seen a legendary pokémon so trusting of someone before. You must be skilled." The man hopped down with an easy grace, like he'd done something similar a thousand times before, tilting his head and rolling his shoulders as he walked. "Or maybe just really lucky…"

"You certainly talk a lot." He stood, watching the man warily as he circled… No, not man. _'Too young…'_ He wasn't adult yet, but probably really close. Maybe in his late teens?

"What? Not up for chatting? Shame, seeing as I was feeling particularly generous and all…"

"And what would you know about _that_?"

"Considering you saved my sister without me having to lift a finger myself? A lot." _'Sister?'_

He found himself latching onto that surprisingly fast. How in the world had he saved the guy's sister? He'd shown up to help Seer save her traveling companion and to put a stop to these psychos' plans. It couldn't have been the kid.

" _Ray… Row!"_ the fact that Eva had bothered to remember the kid's name at all spoke volumes, but between the muddled shock and the sudden rush of blood through his ears he couldn't find it in himself to acknowledge that little fact.

He was too busy trying to wrap his head around the distinctly green hair the crook had suddenly revealed beneath the dark hat all of the new Plasma agents wore, and the distinctly similar features the kid and this one grunt shared.

"What the-?!" Suddenly the ground erupted underneath him, Blue's angry roaring distant as he hit the ground in such a way that pain shot like a knife through his arm. _'What in the world-?'_ Suddenly there were feet in his line of sight, black boots and hands and then he was looking into brown eyes.

" _You may remember this, you may not. But I like you, so I'll say it anyways…"_ There was a hand pulling gently at his hair, forcing him to look the guy in the eyes. _"I went easy on you, others won't, and there's a lot of people more mean and less understanding than me in this whole big plan that's going to go straight over that little head of yours. So check the hero complex and don't be stupid."_

He found himself coughing, and an audible click echoed through the sudden fog overcoming his own senses.

" _Oh, and another little warning. Leave my little sister out of this, otherwise_ _ **I**_ _won't be so nice next time. See ya, Mr._ _ **Hero**_ _."_

He blacked out to the sounds of _something_ big and loud roaring, the pained screech as whatever it was took down Fiery Blue, and then there was nothing at all.

 _Shit_.

* * *

A/N. Yes, I'm occasionally a bitch, thanks for noticing. ;P

But yeah, you win some, you lose some, and sometimes you get your ass handed to you instead. But, ah, anyways. So some of you are probably like _'What the?! Who the-?! What hell just happened?!'_

My answer! Plot point that you may or may not want to make note of. Anyone have any theories they want to share? Yes, no? Stick it in the comments section. If you got questions, PM me unless you don't have an account, then leave it in the comments section.

Hope you enjoyed the admittedly short chapter, see ya!


	9. Of Strange Pokemon and Plans

A/N. Sorry for the long(?) wait guys, I got lost on the road of life. Sorry!

On to the chapter before someone kills me for that one…

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing. William belongs to Cant Catch This. Scott belongs to Fischman.**

*Note: I'm sorry in advance, really I am.

* * *

 **EP 09- Of Strange Pokemon and Plans**

* * *

"Seer! Look!" It had been about a month before anything that could be considered major occurred again. Just outside of some small town that didn't even show up on a map and three days lost in some forest with a sense of growing frustration between the two of them.

Seer doubted Row had ever dealt with any kind of trauma before, so she could understand the kid's lack of understanding when night fell and she refused to go any further. It had sucked honestly, for both of them, but there was little she'd been able to do about the scars her own past had left her with.

Row was… a strange child, but she was getting off track.

"What is it, Kiddo?" she almost snorted, eyes narrow as she finally caught up with her ward at the top of a rather steep hill.

"That."

There was a sprawling meadow jaw-dropping-ly beautiful below them, the flowers stretching as far as the eye could see and casting a rainbow of colors across a backdrop of green. Seer almost wanted to go down there, to see the kinds of potential grass-types she knew made their homes in places like this.

But Row hadn't been pointing at that, not specifically at least. She was pointing at the pokémon _in_ the grass, Gomu all but melting across the kid's head and dropping slightly into her eyes. "I can't see…"

"That's cuz your starter's in the way."

"I know, I still can't see…" Again, strange kid.

"You want to go down there?" She wasn't entirely sure what to think or expect. Row seemed perfectly content to just stand there and let the dragon-type use her like a jungle gym, and from the rattling of the one pokéball kept on the kid's belt, her newly acquired pichu was about three seconds from joining the squishy little thing.

"Row, just..." whatever she'd been about to say was lost to the winds in the next few moments, along with most of her sanity and composure as the ground gave way underneath them to something akin to smoke and _fire_.

She grabbed Row on her way down, somehow, and they both rolled across the top of the hill for a bit, dislodging a now completely disgruntled dragon-type to coo and chitter at their feet. Seer ignored it though in favor of the looming _beast_ of a pokémon now tearing through the meadow in some half-approximation of a battle. _'So_ _ **that's**_ _what caught Kiddo's attention…'_ She couldn't help but marvel at the sight, the other pokémon involved some foreign looking creature she'd never seen before.

Like a bat, almost – black and white, and gold.

" _Pretty…"_ Row muttered in stunned awe from somewhere roughly behind her, and she spared the kid a glace for about three seconds before the other pokémon lit up like the literal _sun_.

Row screamed, maybe, or that was probably actually her, blinded and caught in the middle of two very powerful, unknown pokémon battling each other. It was short lived though, and when their vision finally cleared the two battling beasts were gone again.

The meadow didn't look even the slightest bit disturbed, despite the smoking crater now cleaving the hill practically in two.

"We really should get to that town now…" Seer observed, eyes wide and feeling more than a little put upon after that display.

"Stand ho!" There was a beat of silence that followed that sudden demand, and a kid that couldn't have been much older than Row came running up clanking like the Ghost of Christmas Past. Seer half wanted to yank the backpack off the kid just for a moment of peace and quiet, but he came to a near screeching halt two feet away and looked them both over like he half expected somebody to be seriously injured. "I did see what hath happened earli'r, art the two of thee good now?

Another beat of silence, to be quickly broken by the frankly _unseemly_ snort Row let loose not even two seconds later, falling over herself in unrestrained laughter.

"W-What?" the poor thing managed to somehow get out from between helpless peals of laughter. The boy's expression twisted in some odd mixture of confusion and offense, but Row only barely managed to pull herself back together to look apologetic, and she wasn't even holding it together enough to make the expression sincere in any way. "I-I'm…" there was a… not quite hurt noise somewhere in that apology, and the poor kid's mouth kept twitching every three seconds as she tried to fight the smile working its way across her face.

"No…" Seer found herself responding, sliding just enough to hide the trembling child in her care before continuing, "Just a little startled… What even were those things…?"

"Those gents did look liketh pokémon, though creatures coequal i has't nev'r seen n'r hath heard tale of bef're…" The boy beamed like the sun, just on the cusp of awkward teenager-dom and about as scrawny as your average maybe thirteen-year-old. Possibly twelve.

She made a doubtful noise, and heard something like a disbelieving snort from the brat still trying to control her own laughter behind her.

"With that kind of power, I doubt it…"

"Ah, but most wondrous magician!" _What?_ She paused, giving the boy one long, hard stare half expecting to take back the nonsense that had spilled out of his mouth with some sort of excuse. He continued to smile though; dirty blonde hair falling into his face and completely serious. "There are gyarados, who are also powerful! And the mighty dragons!"

She'd give the kid that at least, but neither of those beasts had looked anything remotely close toa dragon-type, and even she knew what a gyarados looked like. _Those_ had been foreign pokémon, maybe, powerful. _'Maybe legendries?'_ It was entirely possible.

With the amount new regions finally opening up their ports to incoming strangers, and the sheer number of pokémon across the globe, it was entirely possible that there were several gods and deities worshipped in other regions that they simply hadn't seen or crossed yet. The known pokémon species that populated the globe thus far were upward of seven hundred, at least, and from what she'd been getting wind of, there was a new island region joining the rest of the world soon.

Arceus knew how much that would inflate the number by.

"Lunala…"

"Wait, what did you say?" she turned to Row before Medieval Kid could get carried away again, staring the green-haired brat down expectantly. She didn't say anything more though, simply staring at the meadow with something like curiosity flashing across her eyes. "Kiddo…"

"William?" ' _More people?'_ Seer looked up at that, catching sight of probably the sorriest looking kid she'd seen in a long time. Sorry, because he _looked_ like a zombie. Shadows like a building against the sun cast under his eyes, skin a sickly looking pale and clothes loose and hanging off of some frail form.

Everything about him screamed unlucky orphan, and the sight brought a sinking sensation in her stomach. But then she noted the frankly disturbed look in the boy's eyes, and the very distinct ghost-type clinging to the boy's arm.

"Scott! I bethought I toldeth thee t waiteth in the hamlet backeth th're!"

"You mean town, William…" the kid corrected, before turning his attention to both Seer and her ward. "Who are they?"

"A tiny princess and h'r mage cousin! I wag'r yond at least."

She had no idea where the mage thing had come from, and even less of a clue as to what the boy was really saying. She could pick out the occasional word but the boy could be speaking the native language of some other region for all she knew. It certainly wasn't Common.

And why a _mage_? She could've seen rogue maybe, if they were really going down the old fairytales route with knights and crap. But a _mage_? Really?

"These ladies did see the causeth of this destruction," he motioned towards the smoking crater that had originally been the top of the hill. "We bethink its pokémon, but none found here."

"Alola… Lunala?" the kid mumbled behind her, barely legible over the boy's wild declarations to his… _friend_. Was Alola the other pokémon? "Solgaleo?" Great, more weird words.

"Row, what are you talking about? Do you know what those pokémon were?"

"Oh, the dram princess hast knowledge about the beasts?" Medieval would've laughed at in the face for that sentence right there, but her ward was suddenly all shyness and crippling social anxiety.

Row wasn't a timid child typically. She'd figured that out about two weeks in to their little arrangement, if it could even be called that. The kid liked to talk, and possibly because she was used to being ignored or being overlooked, she talked _loudly_. But she didn't deal well with large amounts of people in very small spaces, and even in places where there was a lot of empty air to be filled the kid still clung to her like a leech.

If she felt even a little claustrophobic, then Row got especially weird. She'd rub at the back of her ears, glaring at anything that got too close and make the occasional distressed noise.

For whatever reason, the kid just did not do crowds very often.

Two plus people wasn't really a crowd, Seer didn't _think_ she'd have to worry about Row trying to snap anyone's head off with a baby of a dragon-type and a _pichu_. But then again…

"Is everyone alright?"

"The mistress mage sayeth as much, but I w'rry about the little princess."

"Row doesn't like a lot of people, she's just feeling crowded right now." The ghost-type – _'Arceus, why the fuck a ghost-type?'_ – chittered something at the boy holding it. Scott blinked down at it – _really,_ she had to work on remembering the poor kid's name. Something told her this wasn't going to be the first and last time she saw either of them. Like Ray, if a little less infuriating.

 _Maybe._

 _William_ , because of course the boy two seconds from wearing a knight costume and running around, waving a sword was name William, grinned broadly – some heartfelt attempt to be reassuring she knew. But Row wasn't having it, and refused to de-bury herself from where she was hiding practically up Seer's coat.

"Where were the two of you headed?" The boy, Scott, couldn't have been older than ten, maybe, but something told her the boy was a lot older than even that. "The next town's not far from here. It's a good idea to rest there."

"Yeah, that sounds nice. Especially after that little show!"

"Doth not w'rry! I and mine own companion, Scott!" Honestly, at this point, Seer couldn't blame the kid at all for laughing. The kid was seriously trying too hard at this. "Shalt protecteth the two of thee on thy way!"

"He means, we'll help. If you don't mind a little extra company for a bit, that is."

"That's…" The more sensible part of her was convinced yes couldn't do any harm. Arceus and Mew only knew if those two creatures were really gone or if they'd come back soon to continue what had looked to be a fight of some kind, and she doubted just herself would be enough to protect Row if they came back.

But ghost-types.

And Row didn't look to be getting any more comfortable in their presence anyways.

She sighed, both her fear and consideration of Row's comfort zone finally winning out over her own good sense. "Sorry, nice as the idea sounds, I don't want to stress Row out like this. We'll make our own way to the town, thanks though."

"V'ry well then!" Seer winced, noting the obvious pout the boy was sporting as his shoulders slouched. His… _friend_ placed a hand on his shoulder, smile reassuring and calm despite how haunted the boy looked.

"William, its fine. This kind lady here is probably more skilled than the two of us combined. They'll be fine, and you're frightening the… _'little princess'_ anyways. We should get going as well. Didn't you say you wanted to challenge the Nimbasa gym leader?"

"Ah! Aye! We has't to wend th're anon!"

"Good luck." Seer offered helplessly, expression just as resigned as Ghost Boy. They nodded at each other, Row pulling at her arm all of sudden and sending them both nearly sprawling down what was left of the hill.

"Be careful!"

"Thanks!"

* * *

Ray had nearly torn through an entire library's worth of information, calling up a few professors here and there, pulling some strings and generally making a menace of himself. He needed a name, relations, _something_.

He'd screwed up badly, even if he had managed to run off the Neo Plasma grunts and ruin their operation. He'd been taken down, soundly defeated by an opponent who'd been slightly more prepared than himself. Now he was a potential target, alongside anyone else closest to him.

His parents and his sister at home…

" _Ray… you need to rest, please?"_

"Not yet, Eva. I _can't_." He valiantly ignored the dual-type dragon's pleading eyes, shifting through more papers and eyes skimming down lines of ultimately useless drabble. "If I take a rest, someone gets hurt, I'd never let myself live it down! I made a mistake, now people are going to pay for it!" That was always the problem when it came to dealing with criminals, it seemed.

They were low-down, filthy crooks without a care for the people they stepped on in their pursuit of their own goals. Psychopaths with little care for the world around them beyond what they themselves could gain from it, however they went about doing so. It wasn't really a problem if he succeeded in taking them down and getting them carted off to the police.

But if he failed, even once, it could fall onto the heads of the people he cared about.

He had to track these people down before then. Particularly…

" _Check the hero complex and don't be stupid."_

He could fill the snap of teeth grinding together, but paid it no mind. He didn't _have_ a hero complex. They were crooks and they deserved every single little bit of pain they got.

" _Considering you saved my sister without me having to life a finger myself? A lot."_

' _Sister…'_ The leader grunt had had a sister, Row, if he hadn't been lying through his teeth. _'Maybe_ … _'_

He pulled out his computer; small, portable, tablet-like. It had been a gift from a surprisingly skilled pokémon trainer he'd crossed paths with a few years ago. Filled with all sorts of useful bits of data and information about pokémon _and_ various trainers. It'd taken him three weeks of messing with the thing to discover that it had been linked to most of the pokémon professors' computers, so he had records and access to every known and registered trainer currently active.

' _I don't know Row's full name… but maybe I don't need to…'_ It wasn't a common name, certainly not one that was stumbled upon often, if at all. And trainers with unique names were easier to find than the ones that were more common place. _'Row… Row… Row… Row Weilder!'_ A picture of a frowning child with green hair and blue eyes stared back at him, clearly upset at their current position."Gotcha!"

" _Ray?"_

"Found something, it's alright Eva."

" _I still think you should get some rest."_ He almost sighed, but refrained and instead rolled his eyes in complete exasperation. Why in the world would he sleep when he finally got something?

"Row Weilder, age; 12, born in December…" he skimmed down the rest, all generic information concerning the kid's features and general health. "Two older siblings…" One brother, one sister, and two parents of unusually blank backgrounds. Up until about five years ago, Row's father hadn't existed anywhere at all. And Row's mother? About three years of being _someone_. The older siblings were just as curious.

Clicking on the links hadn't given him any real noteworthy clues. The sister was a fashionista and well-known coordinator, though not the best she wasn't anywhere close to the worst. And the brother, the entire point of this whole affair, was some moderately well-known trainer. No beaten leagues under his belt, but the boy had experience and judging from the amount of competitions he'd apparently participated in, was nowhere close to being considered a slouch.

' _No wonder he won so easily…'_ His pokémon were all well-trained, powerful looking beasts just looking at the pictures. They all looked mean in their own ways, with a certain air of viciousness in their eyes.

" _There's no viciousness in their eyes, Ray! They look eager for battle and happy, that's all."_

"And how would you know that?"

" _Because empath?"_ He'd clearly been letting Eva spend too much time around other humans. She was starting to pick up sarcasm and she was getting good at it. _"Ray, you're villainizing again and jumping to conclusions. How do we even know that this is the same person? He could be saying that to just screw with us! You know how those people are!"_

Liars, crooks, fiends. They'd say and do anything to get their way…

"But it's still a clue. If we track down Row, and ask her to help us contact her brother, we can ask him who would want to impersonate him. Warn him that there's someone out there who knows about his sister, probably both of them." Eva gave him a disbelieving look, floating just slightly behind him before the air around her wavered and a young girl took the place of the dragon.

" _Whatever you say…"_ He smiled, glad for her reassurance, even if she didn't completely believe him for once. The idea of protecting innocents was appealing to the both of them.

There was no need to let other people get dragged through the dirt simply because he hadn't felt like doing anything.

Somebody needed to stop these people after all.

* * *

A/N. Holy SHIT! I actually updated something! Again, thank you for waiting you crazy people, and I'm sorry for making you guys go so long without really hearing from me! I hope you guys are having a lovely summer vacation for those of you relaxing at home and chillin' from school.

And to those of you who aren't school-bound, just hoping you having a nice day period.

Yes, whenever William shows up expect copious amounts of semi-Shakesperean nonsense! That's how he sounds in my head and I'm sticking to it.

Leave a review and tell me what you guys think! See ya!


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